Fake Plastic Life
by thejennamonster
Summary: COMPLETE! NOW WITH EPILOGUE AND AUTHOR'S NOTE! au: zim takes over. dib rebels. destiny is not always exactly what it seems. R&R please!  rating may go up in later chapters...
1. intro

[disclaimer: no, I don't own IZ, or anything related to it. I wish, I did, tho. That would be cool.]  
  
INTRO.  
  
I was 12 years old when I met my first alien. He was in my class at skool. His name was Zim.   
  
For years, he and played a twisted game—he would come up with a plan to take over the earth, and I would spoil it. He played the villain, I played the hero. These were our roles, and we played them with the utmost precision. We were the masters of our roles.   
  
The year I turned 20, our roles became reversed.   
  
For whatever reason, Zim's leaders decided that they wanted Earth, after all. They decided that their "mission" for Zim was no longer a joke to keep him out of their hair…err…antenna, and the stakes were upped on the game. We were no longer playing for Lucky Charms marshmallows—we were playing for big money. We were playing for our lives.   
  
And I lost. I had bet the thing that I held most dear, and I lost.   
  
There wasn't even enough of Gaz left for me to bury.   
  
The Irkens, led by the Tallest, and Zim, took over the Earth. They enslaved the humans and depleted our resources. They began to destroy our home. Zim was now the hero. Zim had won. And I began planning how to take over my own planet.   
  
I avoided being captured for two years after the take over by hiding out in the sewers. Years of watching Ninja Turtles as a kid had taught me that you could go anywhere in the city by walking the sewer system. I used this to my advantage and began freeing the human slaves with my literal underground railroad. After another year, I had freed enough people to make a small army of rebel forces. There were 200 of us. And we were pissed.   
  
The day that Gaz would have turned 21, we made our move.   
  
Little did I know, I had already doomed us all.   
  
[a/n: ok, so the setting is...well...set. ill prolly pump out another chapter of this, today, just cos im sick and have nothing better to do. yay! but comments make me happy, so please r&r. ^_^] 


	2. part one

a/n: and so here we are, once again. If you're reading this, then you decided that the intro was good enough to give an actual chapter a chance. Either that or you're very, very bored. Either way. this story is based off of a dream that I've been having over and over for the past 4 years or so. I just decided to tweak it so that it fits into the IZ universe...even if it is an alternate IZ universe...

so yeah.

Oh, and the title is almost, but not quite, from my favorite Radio head song, "fake plastic trees". I say almost cos the line isn't actually in the song, but it goes along the same gist.

And I was in the turkey the whole time.

Disclaimer: I own Nyquil. And my flu. That's about it right now.

PART ONE

"_Dib? Dib, you awake?"_

_I groaned and pulled the covers over my head, trying to block out the voice that was so rudely attempting to pull me from my dreams. My dreams and I were getting along rather well, that night—something that didn't occur too often—and I wanted it to stay that way. I felt a hand tugging at the blankets. _

"_Dib, I know you're up." There was a pressure on the bed as my sister climbed onto it. She crawled so that she was lying on my back, her face pressed up against the covers where the side of my head was. She was awfully heavy for a 5 year old. _

"_Diiib." Her voice vibrated the blanket against my ear. It tickled, so I rolled over onto my side, making her move off of me into the space by the wall, and removing the blanket from my head. _

"_Yes, Gaz, what is it?"_

_Her little eyebrows came together in a frown, and she looked down at her hands. "Mommy's crying in the bathroom again. I think she's sick. She wouldn't answer the door. I can't sleep in my room: the noise comes through the vent." She looked up, giving me puppy eyes, "Can I sleep in here with you?"_

_I sighed and pulled the covers back so that she could crawl in as a silent affirmative. She grinned and snuggled into me, her head tucked under my chin so that little stray strands of her violet hair tickled my nose. I smoothed them down, and then wrapped my arms around her as her breathing slowed and became more rhythmic. _

_I didn't close my eyes for a long time. I couldn't stop thinking about Gaz hearing our mother crying in the bathroom. This was the third time this week that my sister had come in asking to sleep with me because our mother's nightly habit had upset her. I was terribly worried. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen our mother smile so that it reached her eyes. She broke into tears over the smallest things—often for no reason at all, and whenever Gaz or I tried to comfort her or ask what was wrong, she would just smile weakly and say it was nothing. It was just something that happened to mommies sometimes. _

_And Gaz and I would accept it, even though neither of us had ever seen any of our friend's mothers cry. _

"Commander, there's someone here to see you, Sir."

I looked towards the door way, startled out of my thoughts by the voice of, Kala, my second in command. We had abandoned our headquarters in the sewers months ago to take up residence in the old elementary skool. The part of the city that surrounded it had been mostly turned to rubble by Irken lasers during the first attack. It was then left to rot as the invaders set up camp in more lucrative areas of town. As a private joke to myself, I set myself up in the principal's office. It was nice to be behind the desk, for once, instead of in front of it, which was how I spent most of my time in school.

"Who is it, Kala?"

She rubbed the back of her head in a gesture I had really only seen in Japanese cartoons before I met her. Most of the petite brunette's gestures imitated those seen in anime. Before the war she had been one of those annoying fan girl types who were always throwing random Japanese words such as 'kawii' and 'baka' into her speech, and giving little peace signs. If she didn't have such a keen mind for battle strategy, I would have kicked her out long ago. But as it were, she was my closest and most trusted friend.

"It's a robot, Sir."

"A robot?" I could feel my eyes grow wide.

"Yes, sir. A SIR unit from the looks of it...err...him. He isn't like the others, though, sir. His eyes are blue."

I stood and leaped over my desk, almost knocking Kala over as I rushed out the door and down the hall. I skidded to a stop when I saw the crowd forming around the small grey robot. His eyes were wide and filled with confusion and tears as he looked from one unfamiliar face to another.

"I need to see my master! Where's my master?! Master Dib, where are you?! And where's my piggy? They stole my piggy!" the SIR unit began to full out bawl at this point. I pushed my way through the crowd.

"Gir!" I kneeled down in front of the little bot, a genuine smile on my face for the first time in almost a month. He stopped crying immediately and his teal eyes lit up as he jumped and attached himself to my head.

"Master, there you are! I made you a muffin!" He pulled one out of his head and held it under my nose as proof.

"That's very nice, Gir." I replied, prying him from my head and setting him on the ground. He shoved 'my' muffin into his mouth, grinning around the crumbs. I sighed and shook my head. I had tried many times to program all of Gir's...eccentricities...out of him, but never with any success. His insanity seemed to be engrained into his very being. I had found the SIR unit shortly after the first battle lying in pieces within the rubble of Zim's old headquarters. He had set the base to self destruct after he was beamed aboard the Massive, and it seemed that he had forgotten that Gir was still inside. I put him back together and programmed him to suit my own needs. He was better at reconnaissance than one would think. He was also the only one on our side to see what happened to Gaz first hand. I knew--i had watched the video of his memory disk, but he had stood there and watched. After that he just wasn't the same. He was prone to more violent and emotional outbursts than pure insanity. His childlikeness was forever damaged--though he still couldn't resist a chance to play with a rubber piggy.

I stood and looked down at the small robot. "Lieutenant Gir, did you retrieve the information that I requested?"

Gir's eyes turned red, and he saluted, going into battle mode. "Yes, Sir! Location of nearest Irken outpost recorded, Sir!"

I smiled. "Good." I looked at the crowd that was still gathered until I saw the person I was looking for. "Gretchen?"

She purple haired young woman blushed a little and saluted, "Yes, Dib—Sir?"

"Take Gir down to the computer lab and download his memory chip into the system. See if you can make sense of his readings. I warn you: they may be a little...erratic."

"Yes, Sir." She smiled and reached out her hand to the little unit who had gone back into blue mode and was making two rubber pigs bump into each other. He noticed her and took her hand like a child, allowing her to lead him down the hall.

that's where I'm gonna end this one. Mainly cos it's almost 5am and I should prolly be resting instead of staring at this computer screen. So tell me what you think! next chapter will prolly be w/in the next two days, or so...but more than likely tomorrow nite, based on my insomnia lately.

Toodles!


	3. part two

a/n: I should have been asleep hours and hours ago. This just isn't funny, anymore. I even took a sleeping pill, which seemed to be working for about 10 mins and then disappeared. Ah well. Insomnia gives me an opportunity to be dorky and write stories like this one.

As a little warning: everyone who reads this should read the outline for the unaired ep. "The trial", (You can d/l it at http:www. roomwithamoose. Com / closet / ) because the control brains featured in it will have a key roll in the 'dramatic and exciting conclusion' ™ of this fic. You don't gotta, but it may help. I dunno. I'll prolly mention something about it in a later chapter, I just kinda remembered that I would be putting the control brains in here while I was cooking dinner. Mmmyup.

Oh, and this is an excited note: I have a review!! One whole review!!! Tee-hee! There is no sarcasm here, ladies and gentlemen, this is honest to god chipper ness over a review. They make me smile so much my face gets all stretchy-like. So Kit Kat the Great, you are my favorite person at the moment. I give you Cadbury Crème Egg. Yummy...

And now I leave you to your moosey fate.

disclaimer: legal stuff goes here.

PART TWO

_I was nine years old when my mother's nightly crying finally stopped. Gaz was seven. She was sleeping in my room, which had become almost as much of a ritual as brushing my teeth before bed. Every night had been the same for the past two years: our mother would tuck us into our respective beds, reading us each a story—mine about outer space and Gaz's consisting of one fairy tale or another—before kissing our foreheads and pulling the covers up around our necks. Every night, then, we would ask for our father to come up from his lab and kiss us goodnight, and on some nights we would get lucky, but more often than not our mother would smile her sad smile and tell us that our father was very busy right now, but he told her to tell us that he loved us very much and to not let the bed bugs bite our toes off. She would then give us a little tickle over the covers to distract us from the fact that we knew that she was lying, and blow us a kiss from the door way before shutting off the lights and partially closing the door._

_A few hours later she would lock herself in the bathroom that separated her and Dad's bedroom from Gaz's, and she would cry. And Gaz would come into my room to sleep for the rest of the night._

_The ritual The Night The Crying Stopped was not too noticeably different, yet it still unnerved me so much that I couldn't sleep. Maybe it was the way she had hugged me extra tightly before tucking me in. Maybe it was the way that she had been singing—actually singing—when she handed Gaz and I our lunches that morning before school. Maybe it was the way she stared extra hard at our faces throughout the day, as if memorizing every freckle. Something was off. Something was different._

_I moved slowly from the bed so as to not wake up Gaz.. As cute and adorable as she could be when she climbed into my bed each night, she turned into pure evil if she was woken up before she was ready. I was edgy enough—I didn't need to face her seven year old wrath._

_I could tell something was wrong as I approached the bathroom and didn't hear any noise from the other side. None of the muffled sobs and sniffles that I had grown so used to in the past few years. My breath began to quicken as my tummy did flip-flops and I could feel my pajamas sticking to my back. I remember that they were my favorites—light blue with little grey UFOs. They were my favorites, but I never wore them again after that night. No matter how many times they were washed, they still..._

_I knocked softly on the door. "Mom?" I wanted to shout it, but I could barely bring my voice above a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again, "Mom? Are you there? Are you ok?" _

_I heard a faint 'click' from the other side. The sound of something metal hitting tile. _

"_Mom?"_

_I took a deep breath and put my hand on the doorknob. It was disturbingly cold under my sweaty palm. I could hardly swallow around the lump that had grown in my throat, and I could feel my eyes stinging with hot tears. _

_I turned the handle and pushed open the door, not really registering the surprise I felt over the fact that it was unlocked. _

_The first thing I noticed was that the room was only lit by candles. They were everywhere—on the vanity, the toilet, the floor—their flames pinpointed into little stars in front of my fogging glasses. I remember thinking how pretty they were. _

_It was then that I noticed the blood. And my mother, sitting in the bathtub, her left arm dangling over the side. A few inches below her fingertips, on the floor, lay a razorblade. _

_I don't know how long I stood there, gaping, my mind not being able to fully comprehend what I was seeing. All I know is that I was brought out of my stupor by a small, delicate gasp behind me. I turned and saw Gaz, her fists clenched at her sides, her hair mussed and knotted from sleep. She pushed past me and latched onto our mother's arm, pulling at it, shaking her shoulder, trying to get her out of the tub. I rushed over to her, gently attempting to pry her small fingers from our mother's form. _

_She punched me in the face. _

_I fell back onto my bottom, my hand to my cheek, smearing my mother's blood there. Gaz looked at me, her eyes filled with more pain and anger than I had ever thought possible. "Don't touch me, Dib." She warned between clenched teeth, "Not unless you can make her wake up." Her eyes softened a little, "Make her wake up, Dib. Please? Make her wake up? I promise I'll be good from now on." She turned back to our mother, burying her small head into her shoulder. "I promise, Mommy, I'll be good from now on. You'll never have to yell at me or nuttin'. Dib, too. We'll both be good." She turned back to me, her eyes filled with tears, pleading. "Right, Dib? You'll be good, too, right? Promise you'll be good with me?" _

"_Gaz..." I moved towards her, putting my arms around her shaking frame, gently pulling her from our mother's body. She turned towards me, crushing her face into my chest, and she sobbed as we sat there on the floor of the bathroom, our pajamas soaking up our mother's blood. _

Six hours after Gir had arrived at the base, I received word that Gretchen had finished downloading the information that we needed. I sent a message to all key operatives to meet in the conference room an hr after that to receive the report.

There were 6 of us at the meeting, not including Gir. I had assigned each of us, including myself, a team of 10 other people. The leaders I had chosen consisted of me, Kala, Gretchen, whom I knew from skool and had always secretly been nice to me, even when the other kids thought I was insane. Though I didn't always notice, which made me sad to think about, now. She and her team were in charge of intelligence and reconnaissance along with Elizabeth, a 15 year old computer wiz who had been orphaned in one of the first battles. Her parents had worked with my father. Torque, whom I also knew from skool, who had always made a better point with his fists than his brain. His team was our brute force. Alex, our 25 year old resident gun enthusiast, whose father once headed our local chapter of the NRA. Her team worked on repairing weapons and creating a few new ones in the process. Kala and I's teams consisted of those who had spent time closest to the Irkens. The majority of our teams were once slaves and torture victims. We knew how our enemy thought. We knew how to get inside out their heads. We were all, as it were, very dangerous individuals, and all of us held more of a grudge than the others combined. The rest of our masses were generic soldiers, trained, and, as much as I hated to admit it, expendable.

"As you can see," Gretchen began, pointing to a spot on the 3-D holographic projection that was coming from Gir's head. The robot was sitting in the middle of the table, licking at a cherry blow pop. I don't even think he noticed what was going on. And if he did, he hid it well enough. "This level of the Irken forces have taken over what once was Membrane Laboratories." Everyone in the room glanced at me, pointedly, although they tried to hide it. We all knew that using my father's labs as a base of command was a personal insult from Zim. He liked to add those homey touches to rub in the fact that he had won. For the moment.

"There do, however, seem to be areas here, here, and here, where security is lax. We may be able to sneak in at these points and infiltrate the base. However, we would have to make sure to disable the security system. Gir's report shows that there have been lasers and motion detectors added to these key spots. We would have to get past those before making our way to the main areas."

Elizabeth piped in, as we all knew she would, "No prob. I'll have my team working on that, immediately." She pushed her wire framed glasses further up on her freckled nose, "I suggest we create a virus that Gir can upload into the system before we attack. We should be then able to activate it by remote."

"Excellent." I replied. Elizabeth grinned and blushed. It was no secret that she had a little crush on me—had ever since she was a kid when Gaz and I used to baby-sit her. Well, I did. Gaz just sat and played her Gameslave as usual. She had been one of the first people that I ended up "liberating", and had seen it as a personal favor. In reality, she had just been at the right place at the right time. I turned to the others at the table. "Torque, Alex, any luck on reassembling those ray-guns that we acquired on our last raid?"

"No, Sir." Alex replied softly, frowning, "We thought that we had it figured out, but the damned thing self destructed. Seems to be a safety mechanism."

"Well, keep trying. It would save us a lot of time on the field if we didn't have to rely on bullets all the time."

"Yes, Sir, We will, Sir."

"Alright, then. Gretchen, work more with Gir and come up with a plan of ascent. Kala, you and you're team work with them. My team and I will help Elizabeth out on that virus. Torque, Alex, keep it up with those weapons. Any other points of business?" There was silence. "Alright. Dismissed."

It all seemed so simple, then, in theory.

So. Damned. Simple.

Little did we know it would end up getting a hell of a lot more complicated very, very soon.

All right, that's it for now...I know the flashback was longer than what was going on in the present, but there wont be much of the present until the battle, and afterwards, so the flashbacks will prolly stay long...the next few chapters may even consist of only flashback material, I haven't really decided, yet...I have a lot I want to cover, there.

Ah well.

It's 8am. My eyes burn.

R&R people. It's what makes the burning worthwhile.

Ps: if anyone would like to tell me how to make italics show up, I would love you forever—it would make things a hell of a lot easier in later chapters. Yup.


	4. part three

A/n: Yeah, so it's been forever and a day since I updated this story. Things got complicated with moving halfway across town, school, work, etc. I feel bad, but I know where I want to end up with this, so I figured I would work on it again...

I would still like to know how to do italics...sniff

Disclaimer: I don't own nothing. Not even knowledge of proper grammar.

PART THREE

_My mother's funeral was largely unattended. It was basically just myself and Gaz at the grave, along with the priest. Dad had locked himself in his lab to find the cure for chronic depression. I felt that it should have been raining, but instead the sun was shining full blast and it felt like it was over a hundred degrees outside. I was sweating bullets in my black wool suit jacket, and even the priest looked like he would rather be back at the rectory in some air conditioning, though if Gaz was uncomfortable in her knee length black dress, she hid it well enough. She just stood at my side, staring at the mahogany box that held our mother as it was lowered into the ground, the only outward sign of emotion being the way her small hands gripped the daisies she was holding so tightly that the stems bent under the pressure. Daisies had been our mother's favorite flower, and Gaz had insisted that we picked some on the way to the cemetery to lay on the grave. This instance had been the first words that Gaz had spoken to me since she fell asleep in my arms from emotional exhaustion on the bathroom floor when we found our mother. The next few days leading up to the funeral she walked around in a daze, not responding to any outside stimuli at all until I places my GameSlave into her small hands. She had been bugging me to let her play it since Christmas when I had received it as my one "big" present for the year. (She had gotten a Teddy Ruxpin doll, like she had been begging for since September, but had the instinctual younger sibling impression that anything that was mine was more interesting than anything that was hers, I guess, and Teddy's stories had been listened to once and then ignored.) When I had handed her the small handheld consol, I had loaded into it Tetris, my only game besides Vampire Piggy Hunter, thinking that she had dealt with enough death, lately, but when I returned from the store after picking up some much needed essentials like toilet paper and Count Chocofang Cereal, I discovered that she had gone through my room to find Vampire Piggy and she had already beaten my high score. I let her be, realizing that she needed to take her anger and grief out on something, and I would rather it be virtual piggies than me. _

_The priest concluded his eulogy and made the motion for the coffin to be lowered. As I watched the box make its decent, I had an urge to jump in after it, Lifetime Movie style. I refrained and placed my hand on Gaz's shoulder instead. She shrugged it off, muttering "Don't touch me," under her breath. I felt my heart break a little more and my eyes burned with fresh tears. Didn't she know that we had to stick together? That we were all that was left of our family? Sure, Dad was alive, but...I sighed as I watched her walk to the edge of the hole and drop her flowers in. Her shoulders began to shake ever so slightly as she tried to hold back sobs. The wind picked up right then, blowing her violet hair out of the ribbon she had pulled it back with. I could never be sure, but I could have sworn I heard my sister whisper the words "I hate you," right before she turned around and headed towards the gate of the cemetery. I watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, praying that what I heard has just been a trick of the wind before dropping my own handful of flowers on top of hers. I opened my mouth to say something, but shut it quickly realizing that I was about to echo my sister's sentiments._

"Sir? Sir? Dib. Wake up. This is important." Kala's voice broke through my dreams. I opened one groggy eye and stared at her half blurred shape. I had fallen asleep at my desk, again. On my glasses. Great. It would take me forever to straighten them, again.

"What is it, Kala?" I muttered, closing my eyes, again. I didn't want to think about the battle right now, all I wanted was to go back to sleep for five more...

"It's Gir, Dib. There's evidence that he's been tampered with."

I jerked my head up from the desk so fast I heard my neck pop, "What? Tampered with? How?"

"Gretchen noticed it when she was uploading the data he recorded from the reconnaissance mission you sent him on. It was just a small glitch in his mainframe, so she didn't think much of it then. A few hours ago she went back through it and realized that it was a file that had been impeded into his processor. It...it's a message, Sir."

"A message." I felt my hands curl into fists on their own accord, "A message from who?" I asked, knowing the answer already.

"Zim."

A/n: I guess that's all for now. Thank you everyone who has reviewed this so far. Sorry again to keep everyone waiting. R and R, please. :)


	5. part four

A/n: So, I'm sad cos I bought the 3rd IZ DVD and for some reason Disk 5 stops working ½ way thru Tak. I hope it's just my Playsataion being a pain in the butt, cos I've already returned it once, and with the same result. I wish my computer would stop being annoying and play the visual part of movies instead of just the sound like it's been doing, lately so I can see if there's something wrong with the disk. Poop. I think that concludes my little rant.

Oh, and YAY for being able to do italics automatically! When I first uploaded this story, that asn't there. Tiem for a happy dance!

Disclaimer: I pwn IZ, but I don't 0wn it. Too bad.

PART FOUR

_The next few years fell into a dismal routine. Dad locked himself away in his lab even more than be had prior to my mother's suicide. He went so far as to sleep there most nights. I stopped caring for the most part after a while, feeling that his abandonment was on a higher level than my mother's. At least he was still alive and breathing. He didn't really have an excuse not to be there for us other than the fact that he was a coward. Gaz, however, ever the Daddy's girl, still got excited whenever he would come home and took our "Annual Family Outings" more seriously than most kids her age. Come to think of it, the only times I saw her put forth any sort of energy towards anything that didn't have wires attached was whenever Dad would come home. But then, who knows. He could have run on batteries, too, for all I know. Would explain a lot of things. _

_Throughout elementary school, I learned to regret that I had ever given Gaz my Gameslave. She lived for the thing, only putting it down to eat the occasional slice of pizza or to draw one of her numerous portraits of piggies. Or me being torn limb from limb by some horrible creature. I liked the piggy ones better. She withdrew from her classmates and spent most of her time alone with her crayons and electronic best friend. I stuck by her side like a good brother—sitting with her at lunch, walking her home from school, rambling on to her about some paranormal thing or the other—anything I could do to try and keep her in the world of the living. She was growing up to look too much like our mother for comfort. I was convinced that without my presence I would hear her one night crying in the bathroom. _

_Myself, well, I threw myself into the paranormal. What had once just been a passing interest had now become an obsession. I chased the hairy kid next door, collected strange artifacts like haunted gummies and spell drives, joined the Swollen Eyeballs, and, in the process, became the laughing stock of the school. My peers ostracized me, only acknowledging my existence when it was to make a joke or when they needed a little extra lunch money. I learned to love the insides of lockers. At least if I had already been shoved inside one, it meant that I couldn't be re-shoved into a space I already occupied. Dad stopped listening to my ranting early on, insisting that I show more of an interest in "Real Science" and carry on in his toast-making footsteps. As much attention as I lavished on Gaz, she only looked my way when I was annoying her enough to warrant getting the crap kicked out of me. To my surprise and dismay, by 5th grade I found myself in the bathroom most nights, crying. Guess I was the one who ultimately took after Mom._

_But then, oh but then something marvelous happened. I had my proof. After years of being laughed at the ridiculed, I finally had my proof. I was sitting in class minding my own business and my proof just...marched in as if he owned the place. No one believed me of course, but I would show them. I would show them that not only did I have my fame basically handed to me in a short, arrogant, green package, but my proof had a name. Its name was..._

"Zim." I heard myself mutter under my breath as I stared at the 3D image coming from Gir's head. We were back in the comference room. Gir was staring at it in wide eyed fascination. I guess he honestly hadn't known that it had been planted into his hard drive. Either that or he was envisioning dancing sausages, again. One could never be too sure.

I nodded to Gretchen and she started the message. The frozen image magically came to life and I felt myself take a sharp breath as I heard the voice that came from the projection.

"Hello, Dib." Zim greeted, sneering, and spitting out my name as if it were the cafeteria food from our old elementary school. His voice sounded the same as it always did—nasally and gravelly at the same time. The image was taken from the waist up, as if he were sitting behind a desk facing the camera. The years had been good to him, in some warped way. The earth's gravity had given him a few inches, though I knew that I still had a good half a foot on him, and his green skin was a smooth as ever, missing the premature wrinkles that had begun to form on mine. My hands balled into fists as he continued, "I take it that it is you who has found this little message, but I am wondering if it is too late. For you, anyhow. Have you already sent your little army after me? Are they all dead? Are you the only one left? All alone to defend planet earth once again?" He laughed bitterly, "Heh. Defend. If you only knew.... At any rate, I am highly disappointed in you, Dib-Stink. Did you think that I wouldn't recognize my own SIR unit? I lived with the blasted thing for long enough, I think I would know that mine is the only one with blue eyes. Guess you overlooked that small detail." I mentally cursed myself, realizing that I had. But then, when I first began sending Gir out on missions, I had only seen one or two other units, so how was I to know? "I will say this, though," I was surprised to see the alien's eyes soften a bit, "you have taken good care of him. I didn't mean to leave him in the base when it self destructed. He...he ran back in. Forgot his moose. I'm glad that you were able to get him up and running again." He seemed to have caught his openness and his eyes grew cold once more, "But you are a fool to send him into my territory. I know where you are, Dib. I know where you're hiding and what you're planning. The firewalls that you installed into his hard drive were good, but not good enough. Just like you, I suppose. I know that you're planning an attack on my base. You will fail, Dib, if you haven't already. You will fail and you will die." He smiled, evilly, "Just like your sister. I wonder, though, if you will scream the way she did. And she did scream, you know. For you, actually. "

I felt my jaw clench. "Turn it off." I managed. I guess I wasn't loud enough, because no one made a move. The message played on.

"She was under the impression, I guess, that if she screamed loud enough, you would come save her."

"Turn it off!" I commanded, a little louder. Still the message played on.

"That you were right behind her, ready to rescue her from sudden doom. Just like she always was for you when you were children." He mock-sighed and shook his head, making a slight clicking noise, "Looks like her faith was misplaced, as usual. And do you know whose name she cursed with her final breath?"

"TURN IT OFF!" I finally shouted, my anger reaching its peak. Gretchen jumped, startled, and fumbled with the controls.

"I'll give you a hint: it wasn't mine."

"ARRG!" I made a guttural scream as I lunged for the controls and ripped the wire out myself. The image flickered once and then disappeared. All eyes were on me, as I stood there, my shoulders heaving under the strain of my breath. Kala placed her hand gently on my shoulder; I shook it off and began to storm from the room.

As I reached the door, I heard a small whimper behind me, and Gir's voice ask, "Master?"

I stopped, swallowed hard, and closed my eyes, not looking back. "Turn that...thing...off, too." I stepped through the door way. I could hear Gir shouting after me, and then, silence.

A/n: Whew. Well. That was fun. Or something. Look for the next chapter within the next few days. And, as always, Rand R, please. Your spleen will thank you.


	6. part five

A/n: It's 2am. I should be sleeping, considering I have to wake up in 9 hrs to meet a friend for lunch and then work my ass off till 1am, slaving away for rude people who don't tip well, but I'm not sleepy yet, and I feel bad cos I haven't updated, yet, so, here ya go. Be grateful. Or something. The episode I'm referencing in here about Dib no longer pursuing the paranormal for a short time is one of the unmade ones. The script can be found in "The Closet" section of , if anyone's curious.

Disclaimer: I don't own Zim, though I do own all the DVDs (including a defective disk 5. Oh disk 5, why must you forsake me!! weeps)

_For three years—up until our freshman year of high school—Zim and I played out our roles as "hero" and "short, green, megalomaniac alien bent on world domination". We were children (or had the maturity level of one) and fought as such, using water-balloons and muffins, with the occasional nano-mech or DNA warping serum thrown in for shits and giggles, because we were, after all, very intelligent children. He and I became central figures in each other's lives, so much that the one time I decided that maybe paranormal investigation wasn't for me, and attempted to take Dad's advice and study "Real Science", I was miserable and Zim spent a month on the couch eating snacks to comfort himself. I'm surprised it never occurred to be before high school that he and I had more in common than originally was thought. Both of us were outsiders, longing for the attention that only the other could lavish upon us. He fought for acceptance from his leaders and race, while I fought for the same thing from my family and peers. To each other, we were no longer invisible. To each other, we were important. To each other, we were everything. Which is probably why I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that rainy November day when Zim's world came crashing down around him and he turned to me for help picking up the pieces._

_I was making dinner that night (frozen pizza), getting ready to settle in for the night in front of the boob tube and "Mysterious Mysteries", when I head the knock. It was soft; hesitant. I called for Gaz to get it and then remembered that she was at the mall, camping out because the new GameSlave3 was due in stores at midnight. Glancing at the timer that I had set on the microwave, I hopped off of the counter where I had been perched and made my way to the door. I had almost reached it when the knock came again, a little softer, a little more hesitant, as if the caller was re-thinking his visit and was only knocking in hope that no one was home. _

_I was only partially surprised to see Zim on the stoop when I opened the door. No, strike that, I wasn't surprised in the least to see him out there. He had come by on numerous occasions to brag about one "ingenious plan" or another (after all, what was the fun in coming up with the plans if I wasn't snooping around to stop them?), but what did spark my curiosity was that it was raining. Hard. And by the smoke that was coming off of his arms and face, Zim had done a pretty half-assed job of bathing in paste before leaving his base. _

_For the record, Zim hadn't changed much since elementary school. But then, neither had I. Or Gaz for that matter. Zim had grown little over the past few years—reaching barely 5 foot even--but the spurt had been enough that he no longer fit into his Irken uniform, and had taken to wearing normal clothes to make up for it. At the moment he was wearing a part of low-riding blue jeans and a red button-down shirt with a pair of black converse hi-tops. The fact that he was wearing canvas shoes in this storm made me unconsciously hope that he had remembered to put paste on his feet, though I doubted it, considering the condition of the rest of his body. His wig was matted down to his head with the rain, though I knew that when it dried it would be magically reform itself back into the Elvis do that everyone had become so accustomed to. _

_I had ditched the trench coat long ago, though I still preferred black jeans and t-shirts with little faces or sayings on them. The surprising thing was that Gaz had adopted the coat one day from its place in the Goodwill bag, and wore it daily as an accessory to her whole "Skater-Goth" look. She claimed that it was only because it was the only one she could find that wasn't real leather (she had become a vegetarian after that whole "Shadow Hog" ordeal, and was not hypocritical enough to wear the skins of things she couldn't stomach eating), but I knew somehow there was another reason, though I never thought highly enough of myself to really search for it._

_Zim and I stared at each other for a few seconds before he lowered his eyes and found something interesting to look at by his feet. I was taken aback enough by his show of submission that it jerked me back into the reality of the situation. Zim was at my door. In the rain. On fire (or close enough to it to be smoking). I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the house. He may be my greatest enemy, but I would rather he not be killed by his own stupidity. That was my job. Or something. _

"_What do you think you're doing?" I demanded, "It's pouring out there! What is so important that you forgot that whole 'being allergic to water' thing? You're newest plan to torment me could _not_ be _that_ interesting."_

_Zim was still looking at his shoes. "I…I want to call a truce," he muttered. _

_I wasn't sure I had heard him right. A truce? What was the catch? What was his angle? I voiced these thoughts without really thinking about it. My inner monologue had a tendency to be not-so-inner that way._

"_There's…there's no catch. It's just…" He trailed off and suddenly looked up at me, "Can I have a towel or something? It's cold in here, and I seem to be wet." He asked, strength coming into these words that was absent from the others. _

"_Uh, yeah, sure, Zim. Hold on." I replied, hesitantly, turning towards the stairs. I turned back towards him, "Just so you know, in case this is a plan to lower my defenses or something, I'm just doing this 'cause you're dripping on the floor. I have the security cameras on, so I'll know if you move from that spot, Space Boy." We both knew that there were no security cameras in the house, but it made me feel a little better to threaten the alien. Things felt much less weird that way._

_I made my way into the bathroom for a towel and, after a thought, to the clean laundry basket for some dry clothes the alien could change into. I settled on a baggier pair of Gaz's jeans (the ones she claimed were for "fat days", which just made me wonder about the sanity of the female population, seeing as I noticed very little change in my sister's body type on a day to day basis) as mine would be way too long for him, and one of my shirts that still barely fit from elementary school that I wore normally when working on Tak's ship. I retreated back down the stairs and was surprised yet again by the alien, this time because he hadn't budged from the spot he had been when I left him. He was standing just inside the door way, facing the stairs as if waiting patiently for my return. I began to wonder if Zim was seriously ill._

_I tossed the towel and clothes to him and motioned for him to follow me back upstairs. I gestured to the bathroom. "You can dry off and change in there. Then I want to know what the hell is going on." I stated, trying to sound more grumpy than curious. He nodded and then lowered his gaze again as he walked into the small room and shut the door behind him. After a few minutes the door opened again, revealing a clothed and much dryer looking Irken, sans wig. At my eyebrow-cocked expression he ran a hand through his antenna and muttered, "It was wet. Made my head burn. I left it on the sink to try. You don't—"_

"_It's alright, Zim, that's fine. It's not like I don't know you're an alien. Now let's go back downstairs and you can tell me what this whole 'truce' thing is all about." He nodded and started towards the stairs. I followed him, closely, not wanting him to get the impression that he was welcome nor that I was comfortable with him being here. _

_I followed him into the living room where the first notes from the "Mysterious Mysteries" theme were coming from the TV. I glanced at it, and then back at Zim. Then, realizing what was more important at the moment grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. He and I sat on opposite ends of the couch and, after a few moments of awkward silence, he said. "I got a call from the Tallest, tonight."_

_I was unimpressed. "So?"_

_He sighed and looked down at his hands. He no longer wore his gloves and I could see that each finger was tipped with a small black claw. I remembered his excuse for that being an affinity for black nail polish. Something that got him beat up by an upperclassman who had called him a "fag". "They…they won't be calling me any longer. They said that the 'joke was no longer funny' and that they were going to block my signal frequency from now on." His words were coming faster, now, the emotion he felt taking over, "That I wasn't an Invader to start with. Which is true, I guess, seeing as how my Pak still has me coded as a 'Food Service Drone', but I_ am _an Invader. I _have_ to be. If I'm not than who am I?" I realized that he was no longer speaking to me, really, but I didn't mind. I was too busy trying to piece together the meaning behind his words. _

"_Your mission…it was a joke?" I asked, bluntly. He snapped out of is monologue and looked at me, his eyes pained behind his contacts. _

"_Yes. The…the Tallests wanted to get rid of me, I guess. They weren't expecting me to find a planed at all, actually. They thought I would just…wander around space for eternity. Die when my fuel and air supply ran out. Hell, they even put paperclips in Gir's head to make him stupid. They told me he was 'advanced'." He snorted, "And I was naive enough to believe them! Like that insane hunk of metal is advanced technology. Ha! He cares more about his stomach than his mission. Gods, I'm such an idiot." He let his head fall into his hands. Neither of us said anything for a long time. I didn't know what to say to him I was never god at comforting gestures, not really remembering the last time one was offered to me, and while his lack of a real mission technically made it so that he was no longer my enemy, he wasn't exactly my best friend. Or was he? This explanation he was offering didn't give reason to why he was _here_ of all places. Then it dawned on me—I was all he had left. _

_It was then that the smell of smoke reached my nose and I remembered my pizza that was now burning in the kitchen. I swore under my breath and launched myself over the back of the couch, running towards the source of the smoke, praying that nothing was on fire. I opened the door to the oven, and, in my haste, grabbed the pizza with my bare hands. It was, of course, hot, and I pulled them away with enough force to send me flying backwards, a sharp pain in my tailbone announcing that I had landed on the floor. My hand reached back instinctively to hold my injured back, which made my mind remember that I had burned myself and I yelped again in pain. , which caused me to knock my hip into a kitchen chair, which caused me to grab that afflicted part of me, which made my hands hurt again, etc. My strange, painful dance around the kitchen halted at the sound of laughter from the doorway. Zim stood there, bent in half with his hands on his knees, laughing his head off at my predicament. And not his normal manic laugh, either, but a good natured sound just above a chuckle that I didn't know the alien was capable of making. After staring at him in shock for a few moments, I realized how ridiculous I must have looked and joined him in his laughter, in some strange way sealing our truce._

A/n: I think I'm gonna stop it there. The next chapter will be entirely a scene in the present to make up for the lack of that part of it here, but it's now 430am and I am already frustrated by my inherent lack of ability to type tonight for some reason. The backspace button has gotten more love in the past few hours than it does when I'm trying to type something drunk which says a lot for my mental state right now, I guess.

But I'll try and get the next chapter up with in the next few days. As always, it would be nice to get a few reviews to tell me how I'm doing. I was sad cos I posted the last chapter right before the freeze out before Thanksgiving and so I didn't get any feedback on it. I was really hoping for some, seeing as it was one of the more emotionally draining to write. Ah well. But a great big THANK YOU to all 5 of you who have reviewed so far. It makes me feel all warm and smooshy inside. (Mmm…smoosh filled goodness.)


	7. part six

A/n: So I wasn't going to write the next part for a few days (though I doubt I will finish writing this all in one sitting, since I have to leave for work in a little over a half hr), but the fact that I got not one, but TWO great big detailed reviews made me want to write more as fast as possible. So I dedicate this to **Dibsthe1, ****Goopy Goo**, and the mysterious "" (for some reason I don't think that the little squiggle/asteric/squiggle sign is gonna show up here...) for getting my ass in gear. Especially cos now I want to answer plot questions as soon as possible, and how better to do that than to write, I guess. ( And I would hate to have Goopy Goo's paper-cut suicide on my hands. That just sounds messy…but a really cool band name. Huh.)

Warning: Some sexual content below. And a few swear words. The bad ones. Anyone know the basis for what makes a pg-13 rating verses an R rating?

Disclaimer: I own my apartment and my falling apart 'Cons'. That's about it. Zim isn't on that list, unfortunately. If it were than I could afford to buy Converse back from Nike and I could get new shoes without worrying about finding some sweat-shop kid's finger in the box. sigh (That happened, too, a few years ago. Read it in the paper--a kid's finger found in a Nike shoebox. Ewww.)

PART SIX

I was busy kicking the crap out of a punching bag in the gym/training facility when Kala found me. I sensed her in the door way, watching me, long before she announced her presence. She and I had enjoyed a fling a while back, while we were running our "railroad" and she always had expressed an interest in watching me train. At that time we had sparred together, taking out our emotions of anger towards our new lot in life on each other and then burying those emotions in physical pleasure once our punches and kicks turned into exhausted pushes and shoves turned into pokes and tickles turned into passion and the rest of the troops knew well enough to leave that part of the building lest they heard the muffled sounds of our love making. I can't quite remember when or why that part of our relationship stopped. There was no arguing, neither of us really grew tired of the other one, just, one night we both exchanged admissions of the possibility of love for the other and never spoke or acted on it again. I guess we both just realized that we were soldiers, now, and, with the very real possibility of death looming over our shoulders daily, it was best not to get too close to the other--or anyone for that matter. There wasn't time to mourn any longer. It was time now to act.

However, I could still sense her presence in the doorway, and could tell that, while she was irritated with my actions earlier in the conference room and was coming to give me a good talking to, the sight of my half naked form drenched with sweat, my muscles showing more than usual from the work-out they were receiving, was doing something very good, yet very frustrating to her. At least, part of me hoped that's what was happening. One could never quite know with women. I did know, however, that the thought of me being all sweaty from this workout made me think of _her_ being all sweaty from a workout, which lead me to think of her being all sweaty from a different kind of workout, entirely, which made me think about baseball, because this was no time to think about sex.

"What?" I demanded, gruffly, letting her know that I knew she was standing there, even though my back was to her. I gave the bag another swift punch, making it rock, slightly.

I could hear her chuckle from behind me. "I never will understand how you do that, Dibby."

Ah, there is was. The nickname. The "affectionate mutilation of one's name" as she liked to put it. I knew now that her thoughts had been on the same path as mine. "What's your distraction?" I asked, chuckling a bit as I gave the bag what-for. I could hear her coming up behind me, her boots making swuishy noises on the padded floor.

"Trying to remember why I learned everything there is to know about Sailor Moon in the ninth grade. Yours?" She was beside me, now, her head tilted slightly to get a better look at my face.

"Baseball." I gave the bag a final round-house kick and then dropped to the ground, the padding cushioning my landing.

"Of course."

I pointed to my towel, which was lying a foot or so away from her, and she handed it to me without a word, sitting next to me as I wiped my face. I put my head between my knees, attempting to calm my breathing and heart rate. I lay my cheek on my knee and looked at her, my eyebrow raised pointedly. She sighed.

"Are you alright?" She asked. It was the one question I knew was coming, and the one that I dreaded most. I frowned.

"Do I _look_ like I'm alright?" I stood up, stretching, hoping to distract her from the next question I knew she would ask.

"What really happened to your sister?"

Shit. The ploy didn't work. I put a scowl on my face and draped the towel around my shoulders. "I don't want to talk about it, Kala." I growled.

"Damnit, Dib, one of these days you're going to have to talk about it!" She cried, jumping to her feet. She grabbed my shoulder, and turned me to face her, "Elizabeth is inconsolable over your order to turn off Gir; it feels to her that you ordered him killed ! Gretchen is beside herself with worry over both the girl and you, the troops are becoming paranoid, now, about invasion and just within the past few hours there have been 20 people caught attempting to go AWOL, which is _never_ good for moral, 'specially considering we need all the troops we can get! There is a _war_ going on outside, Dibby! A fuckin' war! And it isn't exactly comforting to know that the enemy knows the exact button to push to make our _leader_ become an over emotional wreck! So just fuckin' get off your emotional high horse and get off your chest what happened to Gaz and _deal_ with it! We would all understand! _I_ would understand! There are 200 of us trusting you with our _lives_, Dib. I would think that you would be able to trust at least _one _of us with your secret."

Her hand was on my face, now, the anger draining from her eyes as a felt mine fill with tears. The war that was waging inside of my body was almost as bad as the one outside of the doors of the abandoned school. I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell _somebody_, but I was so ashamed of myself, so angry with myself. Because I knew that, even though it was Zim's hands doing the work, I was the one who committed the sin. I was the one who was to blame. I was the one who…

"I killed her, Kala." I whispered. Her eyes opened a bit wider in shock, but her hand didn't leave my face. Her fingers and thumb wiped away my tears one by one as they left my eyes, "I did it. I sent her to that house. I thought he wouldn't harm her. She had _insisted_ he wouldn't hurt her and I let her go. I didn't even try and stop her." my words were coming fast, now, my tears even faster. It felt good to finally cry, even though there was still that voice inside of me calling me an idiot for doing so. My tears wouldn't change anything, so why bother? "She went into that house, and he…if she didn't come back out in an hour I was supposed to go after her, but…Oh Kala, it had been such an exhausting week! I hadn't gotten any sleep in days, and the tree I had hidden in actually felt comfy for once, and…Kala, I fell asleep! I was supposed to be watching for her signal, waiting for her to come out, or for me to have to go it, but I fuckin' fell asleep!" My insides felt like they were on fire, now, the pain of my confession burning my soul. "When I woke up it was dark, and…and I could hear her screams, coming from the basement labs. They were horrible, but I couldn't get in, the gnomes…he had upgraded the gnomes, and…Kala, I killed her. I killed my sister!"

I was sobbing full force, now, the weight of it making my knees weak and forcing me to the ground. Kala went with me, and my arms went around her waist as hers went around my shoulders as she made little cooing comforting noises, and I sobbed into her neck.

"It's not your fault, Dib, you didn't kill her. She wanted to go. You know that even if you had tried to stop her, she would have gone, anyhow. It's not your fault. You couldn't control her or your body's actions. It's not your fault, Dib, really, it's not." She took my face in her hands, again, forcing me to look at her, as her fingers wiped more tears. "It's not." She repeated, softly.

My eyes traced a triangle from her left eye, to her right, to her lips, and back again. In that instant, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Whether it be because of her readiness to forgive my sins, or because of the long repressed emotions we held for one another, I didn't know, but before I knew it, my lips were on hers and my hands were in her hair, and we both were whimpering, myself out of desperate need for comfort, and her out of the sudden contact. She responded to my kiss with an equally eager fever and before either of us realized, our hands were working on their own regard, mine pulling off her shirt, hers pulling at the zipper on my pants, and soon we were both naked and moving against each other in a way that neither thinking about sports nor cartoons was going to stop. There was a slight hesitation at the key moment and our eyes met, and I saw that her need equaled mine and with a slight nod from each of us, our eyes closed and I slid into her, her gasp and her moan music to my ears.

Neither of us cared who heard us. Neither of us cared that there was a war outside, or that people were dying while we indulged in such simple, primitive pleasures. All that mattered was our need for what the other gave. And for the moment, that was enough.

A/n: Ok, so that's where I'm ending things for now. The next chapter will be up prolly by this weekend, if not sooner, and back to the normal flashback and then present scenario format. Sorry that I spilt the last chapter and this one away from that, but I don't think that it really took away from anything, did it?

As always, please click the neato little review button and tell me how I'm doing. Praises will make me feel smooshy inside and flames will make me giggle, cos any response is better than no response, cos it means that someone out there is listening. Or something.


	8. part seven

A/n: So I realize that I kinda screwed myself, in the last chapter, cos I didn't want what happened to Gaz said now. I don't have an outline to this, and am just kinda letting my mind wander with what happens (Though I do have the main plot worked out, and of course, the ending, which was my whole point to this fic), and, while it fit for Dib to confess to Kala then, it wasn't the original plan. I wanted to draw it out a little longer cos I wanted a certain flashback scene to follow it, but now it can't cos I'm not that far in the flashback, yet. Ah well. C'est la vie and such. The sex wasn't supposed to be there, either. In short, the entire last chapter was completely different than I had originally planned. My brain sucks for making that happed. Evil, evil brain. Grr. I need to remember to stab it with a q-tip or something.

I also realized that I didn't correct the A/n at the beginning of the last chapter when it said I had Two reviews, and then thanked Three people. Oops. I had begun the chapter earlier in the night before two reviews got to me. So, yeah. It's not that I can't count, I swear.

I'm gonna rant at the end of this, because I've noticed something that irks me about other authors on this site and their review/update procedures. But I'll leave that till the end, and let you guys do what you came here for and read the next chapter. Yup yup.

Disclaimer: I don't own Zim. Mr. Vasquez does, in all of his Spooky glory. Mmmm…spooky.

_For the next few years things were pretty civil between Zim and I. Our truce meant that we no longer played our war games, aside from the occasional paintball match or water balloon fight in the summer (after Zim had thoroughly bathed himself in paste, of course; though it was hard to resist the occasional squirt of water while he was unprepared, if only to keep him on his toes.) Gaz still held up her stoic, unattached, rather frightening persona when she joined us in high school, but something was different. Something was…off. I noticed her spending more time downstairs, in stead of locked in her room as she had done since she hit puberty, especially whenever Zim was over. This was another one of those things that, like the fact she had taken to wearing my old trench coat, I really just couldn't put my finger on her reasoning. But there were times when I would run up to my room for something and come back down to find her and the alien talking pleasantly over cans of Poop Cola in the kitchen or battling on-screen on one of Gaz's many fighting games. _Marvel Vs Capcom_ seemed to be their favorite, but only because Gaz seemed to find it sickly amusing to kick someone's ass with a character that looks like it came out of a _Lego_ set. After a while I got over my surprise at these interactions and found myself easily joining in their conversations or claiming to play "winner" during their video game tournaments. I would sit on the couch next to my sister (Zim normally opted for the floor, claiming it was more comfy than having something pressing up against his pak), and was almost able to convince myself that we were becoming something of a family. A few times I would glance over at my sister and have her meet my gaze with a smile. A small, almost sad one, of course, because Gaz had never really smiled since our mother died, but still. It was something. It was uplifting. It was encouraging. It was the way things should be. _

_Our peace lasted for years. We progressed though the public school system, graduated (both Zim and I at the top of our class, holding the positions of solitarian and valedictorian respectively, and Gaz settling somewhere in the top hundred, but still graduating with honors. Dad showed up at both as a guest speaker, though only on hover screen, which I noticed missing by the time I walked the stage, and while Gaz did two years later. But then, it was understandable. He did have toast to make and all) and moved on to college. Gaz went to the local tech school for graphic design, while Zim and I attended the university. Me for journalism (while I never gave up my dream of being a paranormal investigator, I realized that, as a journalist, I may be taken a little more seriously), and Zim for…well, we never were able to figure out what Zim went for. I don't think he was actually enrolled in the school—he just attended any classes that caught his fancy, never sticking with one for too long, but it kept him occupied. _

_It was a calm, eventless existence, but it was a welcome change from the chaotic years of our youth. However, our peace was short lived. Shortly after my 20th birthday, everything changed. _

_One day, Zim got a phone call. _

_He showed up at my door that day in April unannounced, which was really how he did everything. I had long since moved out of my father's house and into my own one bedroom apartment closer to the city where the university was. Gaz had decided to stay at home, finding it cheaper for her first year of college, and Zim had always lived alone in his base, aside from Gir, so he had just stayed there. I wonder, however, if things wouldn't have happened the way they did, had he just accepted my offer to have him be my roommate. But then, he always was too stubborn for his own good. _

_He didn't knock when he entered my apartment—he never did, anymore, and walked straight into my bedroom where I was working on a paper for my Comp II class. I greeted him with a smile as he entered and sat on my bed, and raised a finger to him signaling that I would be able to talk in just a minute, as soon as I finished the paragraph I was working on. He nodded, and continued to sit on the edge of the mattress, looking slightly distracted and uncomfortable. I could sense that something was wrong, which made me frown as I put the finishing touches on my paper, and ran the spell check. I hadn't seen the alien this bothered in years. Not since Gir had unexplainably shut down one day because the robot had eaten too many chocolate cupcakes and it slopped up his motherboard. I swiveled my chair towards him and asked him what the matter was._

_He sighed. "I got a call, last night." He looked at the bedspread, picking at a loose threat with his fingers, "From the Tallest." _

_I gaped at him. He had explained to me all about his culture long ago, and I knew that a sudden call from his leaders after so long of a silence could only really mean one thing. I prayed that what my instincts were telling me was wrong "What did they want?" _

"_They…they told me that they had taken over the majority of the planets on our side of the galaxy and had made the trip over here to see if there was anything worth taking. They noticed that while most of the planets on this side are uninhabited and therefore, ripe for conquest, Earth has a solid population, and an empire can never have enough followers, or enough slaves. The fact that your people are tall makes them an even better steal. To oppress those taller than one's self would be a great accomplishment. _

_They contacted me to offer me reinstatement into the collective. They would give me back my title of Invader—for real this time, not just because I couldn't be pacified with a sandwich. They would have the Control Brains re-code my pak and everything. For some reason, actually, the Control Brains were the ones who suggested that the Tallest contact me to begin with. They informed the Tallest that my banishment should be revoked, and that Earth was worthy of being the first planet admitted into Operation Impending Doom 3. All I have to do is give up all of the information that I have collected over the years. All I have to do is give them Earth, and I can go home."_

_I stared for a few minutes, my mouth agape. I didn't know how to react at first, but then, after my body had caught up with my racing brain, I was able to ask the question I already knew the answer to._

"_What…what did you say?"_

_He looked me in the eye. "I told them yes."_

_I felt my heart break in that instant. My body went cold, numb. I wanted to cry and beat the crap out of the small green creature who had become my best friend. How could he do something like this? After everything his people put him through, how could he just go back to them? I shouted these questions at him rapid-fire, spewing them from my mouth as quickly as my brain thought them up. I was on my feet, throwing my hands in the air, pacing like a mad man. He sat there, calmly, on the edge of my bed, taking in my tirade and then asked a simple question that made me stop dead._

"_Do you love your father?" He asked._

_I stared at him. I realized I had been doing that a lot within the past few minutes. "What does that have to do with anything?"_

"_After everything your father has done to you—ignore you, abandon you emotionally after your mother died, belittled your interests and your accomplishments—do you still love him?"_

"_Of course I do. He's my father."_

"_Would you do anything he asked to get into his good graces? To have him notice you? To have him tell you that he's proud of you and that he loves you?_

"_Yes," I answered, hesitantly, still not fully realizing where this line of questioning was going._

"_I never had a father. The only memory of a parent I have is of a cold unfeeling robot arm. However, I do hold the same sense of loyalty, the same sense of love for the Control Brains and the Tallest. I was never nurtured, I was never cared for, but I was provided for. I was given a path. I was given food and shelter and clothing and a meaning for my existence. The Control Brains brought me to life. I owe them just as much as you owe your father. I love and respect them just as much as you do your father. And, just like you, I would do anything I can for just the opportunity that maybe, just maybe, they will say the same for me. I'm sorry, Dib. I know that you feel that I've betrayed you, but I can't pass up this chance. I'm sorry." _

_He stood, looking up at my shocked expressing with eyes that reflected sadness, but also fierce determination. "The next time we meet, Dib, we will be enemies. We're no longer children. I will not hesitate to kill you."_

"_I know." I replied, "You can be assured the same from me." I placed my hand on his shoulder. _

"_I know. That's why I came here to tell you. I didn't want to meet on the battlefield as friends. It would hurt too much to die that way." _

_We embraced they way brothers would and he turned then and walked towards the door. Pausing with his hand on the knob, he said, "Tell Gaz that I'm sorry."_

"_She won't understand." I explained, shaking my head._

_He looked back over his shoulder at me. It was the last time I looked into his eyes as a friend, "She's going to have to."_

_The sound of the door closing behind him resonated in my ears for what felt like years._

The process of getting re-dressed was much more awkward that I remembered. Kala and I adverted our eyes from each other's bodies, trying hard not to meet the other's gaze. The conversation was slight, mainly consisting of reassurance that, while neither of us regretted out actions, it was something that wouldn't happen again. Nor should it be spoken of. In fact we should both just forget it. We were being both fully honest and lying to each other at the same time. For some reason it made me feel 17, again.

We left the gym together, silent for most of the walk towards my office. When we arrived, she turned to me, and tilted her head to look at my face. "What should I tell the troops? What are we going to do, now? Zim knows our position. He knows when we're going to attack. What happens now?"

"When did Gir's records say our attack date was?"

"Three weeks from now. December 28th."

"Wait—the 28th? What day is it today?"

"The 7th, why?"

I felt a grin form on my face. How could I not realize how close it was? How could I have forgotten? Three days from now, 21 years ago, a very important person in my life was born. One who was taken from me all too soon. One who I had sworn to revenge. One who's father was always a little too busy to give her a proper birthday party. Well this year, I was going to make sure she got one.

My face hurt my grin was so large as I told Kala to ready the troops. We would attack in three days.

"Why?" she asked, her expression slightly disturbed in my sudden enthusiasm.

"We're gonna celebrate Gaz's birthday. And this year, it's going out with a bang."

A/n: OK, that's enough for now. I feel like it may have gotten a bit rushed at the end, here, but it's 330 am, and I really just wanted to get that little bit out of the way there. Whee. I need some sleep. As always, review? Please?

Which does lead me to a little rant—why do some authors try and bribe or threaten their readers when it comes to reviews and updating chapters? What's up with this "I won't update till I have 5/10/15 reviews?" I know that everyone loves feedback, and really, we're writing hoping that people will read, but I don't think that saying " I require reviews or else I won't write anymore" is the right way of going about it. If you have a story to tell, just tell it. Don't let the fact that not enough people are saying "good job" or too many people are saying "bad job" get you down. I have read and enjoyed many stories and didn't review. Either cos I didn't have time or I just couldn't think of anything to say other than "nice fic", but that doesn't mean that I think that it's worth less on ones that I have reviewed. I dunno. It's just something that I noticed and bothered me, and I'm prolly not even expressing myself well, cos it is 330 I the morning and I have worked all night and I am dead as a zombie tired.

I will, however, never try and bribe you guys with chapters for reviews. Tho I do appreciate them. A lot. Sometimes they're the only thing that will keep me smiling, so please, give the review button your love. But if you don't I'll still give you at least one chapter a week. Just cos I have a story to tell.


	9. part eight

A/n: I apologies for the gigantic delay on updating this, but things have been super busy with finals and my mom came in from out of town and my birthday (hooray for legal drinkage), and my computer acting wonky (it had a cold, ala Trojan virus…evil), etc. No, I haven't forgotten about this. Sorry sorry sorry….

Ps—I wonder if I pissed anyone off with my little rant in the last chapter, considering there was a great lackage in reviews (aside from my email from Dibsthe1, which, I wrote you back, but my internet shut down right after I sent it—the evils of wireless—so I couldn't tell if it got through or not. If it didn't, sorry, I wasn't ignoring it…). If I offended anyone, I apologize. (shruggy). Or maybe the last chapter just sucked. Ah well.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own IZ, I don't own IZ, I don't own IZ, I don't own….

PART EIGHT

"_You're kidding, right?" Gaz demanded. We were sitting in our father's kitchen, drinking coffee like two normal, civil family members. To look at the scene one would never be able to tell that I had just told my sister that our closest friend was about to take over the world for an emotional 30 pieces of silver. _

"_I wish I were." I sighed and ran my hand though my hair. This was not a conversation I wanted to have. Not with Gaz. She and Zim had become…close over the years. He was the one to pull her out of her shell. He was the one who taught her, with his inability to understand human culture, how to accept herself and others. She trusted him. He was the extra family member she had needed while growing up. He was the one she had gone to when she got her first period (she claimed that it was to "help him understand more about human biology" while years later when going through Gir's memory disks I discovered it was because she was too uncomfortable speaking to me or Dad. Guess males of other species don't count when it comes to embarrassing female bodily functions. Or something). He had been her date to prom after her "boyfriend" at the time had blown her off for a cheerleader. (The kid later found a liver bomb on his front porch—courtesy of Gir. Where he found the liver I never did want to know, though knowing the robot, it probably came out of the never ending recessed of his head). They understood each other. They needed each other in a way that I would never be able to understand. And here I was telling her that her best friend would now rather kill her than look at her. I feel like dirt. _

_Gaz's voice was emotionless, as always, but her pain and anger showed in her eyes and hands as she gripped her coffee cup to the point where I thought I heard the porcelain creak. "You're lying. There's no way that Zim would go back to those assholes. Not after the way they treated him. This is a joke. Late April fools. Ha-ha, Dib, it's not funny."_

_I was growing weary of this. "I'm not lying to you, Gaz. I'm just telling you what he told me. He came over to my apartment, informed me that the Armada was on its way and that the truce is off. If he meets us again, he will kill us, unless we kill him, first. It's war, now, Gaz. I know you're upset, but—"_

"_NO!" She shouted, cutting me off. She slammed her hands on the table, standing with such force that her chair tipped over behind her. "You don't know, anything, Dib! You're wrong! There's no way, absolutely no way that—"_

_I was fed up. "What do you want me to say, Gaz? Huh?" I was standing now, as well, the volume of my voice rising to meet hers, "Do you want me to sugar coat it? Do you want me to tell you that everything's going to be ok? Do you want me to coddle you and hold your hand? Cos it's not going to help, Gaz, it just won't. You're 18 years old, damn it; it's time for you to realize that not everything is going to go your way! Our mother killed herself, our father doesn't love us, and Zim is the bad guy. Just fuckin' accept it, already!" _

_In the back of my mind, I was surprised at myself. I never raised my voice to Gaz. No matter how much emotional and physical abuse she had put me though over the years, I never fought back, never yelled. I had allowed her to take her frustrations out on me without a word, knowing that it was just because of her inability to cope with our mother's death, with our father's abandonment, with her own social inadequacies. Our entire lives I sat there and took it, no matter what the subject matter, no matter what the situation. It was the only way I could think of to protect her, the only way I could think of to keep her from falling into the abyss that had claimed the only other prominent female in my life. And here I now was, going against my own vows, my own determination that I would never be the one to hurt her. I guess after so many years a person can't just sit and take it anymore, either that or Zim's betrayal had affected me more than I originally thought. _

_Gaz's jaw was set, her mouth and angry bloodless line, her eyes boring into mine with such intense fire that, while she hadn't hit me out of anything but playfulness since I was 14, I was almost certain that she was about to knock my head off. However, at the key moment, her face just…cracked, crumpling in on itself like a deflating balloon, and she spun on her heels and ran out of the kitchen, away from me. I heard her boots on the stairs and the sound of her door slamming and I was left alone in the kitchen. _

_My father's voice drifted up from somewhere in the basement, shouting something about raising the dead, to which I mumbled an automatic apology that there was no way he could have heard, even if he were listening, and I righted the chair that Gaz had knocked over. I flopped into it, feeling like I weighed 500 pounds, and stared at her discarded coffee cup. _

_In a sudden moment of rage, I hurled it across the room, relishing in the sound as it shattered against the wall. I let my head fall against the table, not fully feeling the impact. 'I just don't fuckin' care, anymore,' I thought, 'I just don't fuckin' care.'_

_Some time later—it could have been minutes or hours, for all I knew—I sensed someone enter the kitchen. I raised my head from the table to meet Gaz's eyes in the doorway. _

"_I'm going over to Zim's, tomorrow. I'm going to talk some sense into him. He'll listen to me. You can come if you want. Make sure nothing happens—though I doubt anything will. I know _he_ won't hurt me." The way her voice emphasized the "he" in her statement as her eyes bored into mine ripped my heart in half, but all I could do was nod. _

_Without another word, she turned and made her way back upstairs. I lay my head back on the table, trying to ignore the deep sense of foreboding that had crept over me. I closed my eyes, but sleep just wouldn't come. The gods were not that kind._

The next three days were full of the kind of organized chaos that made them seem to drag by at lightning speed. Gir was re-activated, much to Elizabeth's glee. The entire crew shared in an indulgent chuckle as the girl threw her arms around my neck in thanks before running off with the little droid to the computer room to install the new firewalls that she and Gretchen had coded before coming up with the best new plan off ascent.

Torque and Alex worked for a full 36 hours with their crew before finally perfecting the new weapons which were distributed to the appropriately trained infantry men and women, while the rest gathered and made bullets and oiled their handguns and rifles. By the second day everything metal that could be spared was melted down and put into the molds to be made into the new water-holding bullets that Alex had devised, which would mean instant death for any Irken hit, as the bullet would explode on contact, shedding water into their vital organs. The aliens could protect their outsides from their largest weakness, but not their insides.

Kala worked with the rest of the troops with basic moral issues while I made my way to each team checking their progress and working with Gretchen and Elizabeth on maps of the Irken base and the plan of attack. There was a sort of electric energy in the air, a pulse, as if my rag-tag army was a living, breathing creature, a predator. This energy made me feel a sort of primitive lust, and I found myself smiling with my teeth as I worked, a sound that was the mixture of a growl and a purr in my throat.

At the end of the third day, the troops met in the cafeteria for a final dinner. The other officers and I sat at one table, while the lower ranking solders sat in various places around the room. We had found a decent sized loot of unbroken bottles in the cellar of a dilapidated liquor store, and after the meal, rations of wine were given to the troops. I noticed that after all of the wine was poured, all of the eyes in the room were turned towards me. Kala nudged me a bit with her elbow and lifted her glass slightly, indicating that I should give a toast.

I rose slowly in my chair, my brow slightly furrowed, wondering what exactly I was to say, and as I stood there, grasping at words at they flowed through my mind, I heard the tink of metal on glass as saw Gir tapping the side of Elizabeth's glass, both of them grinning and giggling like idiots behind their hands. I rolled my eyes and gave them a little smile, and then opened my mouth to speak.

"I..I feel you all looking at me, as if you expect some words of wisdom---something great and quotable that will be put on a greeting card, or written in history books or on a statue or something along those lines, but…I can't seem to think of anything that meaningful. You have all been amazing soldiers and friends and family and I am honored to have gotten the chance to work and live with all of you."

Everyone was smiling, every mouth happy, while every eye was sad. They knew, just like I did, that most of the people in this room wouldn't be coming back, that tonight would be their last night. That this was their last glass of wine. These were the thoughts at the front of my mind, and my mouth longed to say them, while all of those eyes begged me not to.

"No matter what happens, tomorrow…" I felt that familiar lump rising in my throat, "just…make tonight count. Tonight let's celebrate the freedom that tomorrow we will win."

There was an uproarious round of shouts and applause from the troops as glasses were raised and wine was consumed. I sat back down and clinked my glass with my other officers, trying to keep the sadness out of my smile. Torque gave me a friendly pat on the back which almost launched me across the table and Alex offered me a kiss on the cheek. I knew that my small army was going to live tonight to its fullest. Tears would be shed, children would be fathered, stories would be shared, and then tomorrow, all would be for naught. All of their stories would come to an end, children would remain unborn, and the tears would be the only constant. I excused myself from the party and made my way back to my room for my coat. There was somewhere I needed to be.

A/n: Man, I want to write more here, but I can't seem to figure out how to make the transition clean enough, so I guess I'll just start o the next chapter. Yeah, I used the F-word a few times in here, and still have this a PG-13 rating, but if you're 13 and haven't heard that particular 4-letter word, you've been living in a box in an igloo in Antarctica. Or something.

I'm amused that I've reached 46 pages so far, making this the longest thing I've ever written. That makes me giggle. Maybe I'll hit a hundred, though I doubt it. I'm getting pretty close to the end, now. There are only two flashback parts that I want to do and then 5 main plot points that still need covered before the ending. So I figure about 4 or 5 more chapters before the conclusion...Though I'm not sure how I'm going to end this. As I'm sure I've said, before, this is based on a re-occurring dream I've been having for years, and the dram has two endings. I'm not sure which I'll go for, though I just might write out both for shits and giggles. Not sure. But yeah…reaching the climax, soon. Be excited.

As always, please r and r and I will do a little happy dance. To The Cure. Or something.


	10. part nine

A/n: Not much to really say here. Thanks to Dibsthe1 and Goopy Goo for reviewing…ummm….Oh, and I have a new fic running around in my head that I'm prolly going to start after I'm done writing this chapter, if only because it's being insistent (one scene in particular, because it's just so deliciously awful), so look out for that. Don't worry, though, I'm not gonna slack on this one, cos this one is after all my baby. Aren't you, Schnookums, yes you are…ahem…yeah.

DISCLAIMER: I OWN ZIM! I DO I DO I DO! IT'S MINE! ALL MINE!! MUAHAHAHAHAHahuh?…what's this? A subpoena? I have to go to court? For copyright infringement? Aw, you're no fun….

PART NINE

_The next morning found Gaz and I on the walk outside of Zim's base. I had spent the night in my old room in my father's house, staring up at the ceiling, trying to sleep and failing miserably. In between bouts of insomnia I continued my efforts to inform others of the impending threat. Unfortunately, by now, not even the Swollen Eyeballs would believe me. I guess after so many times crying "alien" the world will just let you get eaten. Or something. _

_I stared at the field of lawn gnomes that resided in Zim's front yard for what seemed like hours. My body was sleep deprived and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. I almost missed Gaz walking through the front gate. I grabbed the sleeve of my old trench coat that she was wearing and pulled her back to my side of the gate, where it was safe._

"_I don't think this is a good idea, Gaz."_

_She pulled her arm from my grasp, "He's not going to hurt me, Dib, alright? I know what I'm doing. It's just Zim."_

"It isn't just—_"I noticed the gnomes swivel slightly at the raised volume of my voice. I lowered it back to a decibel that was underneath their levels of detection, "it isn't just Zim, Gaz—at least not the Zim we know. He's on a mission, now. He wants to impress his leaders. He will kill you."_

"_He's not going to kill me, Dib, alright? He said that if he met _you_ on the battlefield he would kill _you_. He never said anything about _me_."_

"_I think he was just making a generalization."_

"_I think your voice is stupid." _

_I was taken aback at her reversal into childhood insults, "You haven't said that since we were kids."_

"_Well you're acting like you're 12, I figured I might as well follow suit."_

_I rolled my eyes, "Now you're just being ridiculous."_

"_No, you're being irrational."_

"_You're being reckless."_

"_Paranoid."_

"_Over confident."_

"_Over protective."_

"_Damn it, Gaz, I'm you're brother; that's my job! What am I supposed to do? Just let you waltz in there to your doom? Say, 'alright, Gaz, you win', just like I always have? No, fuck that! I'm putting my foot down on this one, Gaz. We're going home. We'll figure out some other way to get through to Zim, ok? Let's just go." I grabbed her arm, again and tried to pull her along with me. She wouldn't budge. Instead she pulled back, spinning me around to face her with strength that I didn't even know she possessed, anymore. _

"_Well what do you propose we do, Dib, huh? Just sit around and wait for the world to explode? We have to do _something!_" Her eyes pleaded with me to understand her resolve, "Right? You spent the first three years we knew him trying to save the world. It's my turn. Ok?" She tilted her head a bit to get a better look at me face, "Ok?"_

"_No, It's not, ok, Gaz," my voice was calmer now in an effort to strengthen my will against her. If I could just keep from getting too emotional, she wouldn't be able to make it through my defenses. "You're right, though; I spent a long time fighting Zim, trying to save the world, which is why I need to finish the job, now. This is _my_ fight, not yours."_

"_Oh, and what are you going to do, pin a nasty note on his door?" She scoffed. I felt a twinge of indignation rise within me._

"_Hey! That was in an alternate reality! I had an iron lung! And how do we know this?!" I knew what she was trying to do, how she was trying to trick me, and my sleep deprived brain wouldn't be able to keep up for very much longer._

"_Time travel, paradoxes, you need to brush up on your science fiction."_

"_Fine, alright, but what does that have to do with anything?"_

"_Your plans never worked, remember? You would get caught, he would get all Bond Villain and I would have to come save your ass. It's time I get a shot, alright? You want to protect me? Fine: if I'm not back in an hour, you can come bargin' in after me, guns a-blazing, Ok? Just let me do this!"_

_I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. She had me. She was too stubborn and I was too tired to fight her will anymore. I just had to hope for the best. "Alright, fine. But keep your watch on at all times. I want constant communication. Constant progress updates. A running commentary, alright? And if I think something's fishy I'm gonna pull you out of there whether the hour is up or not, got it?"_

"_Yeah yeah, fine fine." She replied, waving nonchalantly over her shoulder as she started down the walk. "I'll be fine. Just…go find yourself a tree to hide in or something." _

_I watched her walk down the path to the front door as if she owned the place, the gnomes not giving her any heed. One would have thought that fact alone would have roused my suspicion even farther that this was a trap had I not known already that the gnomes had never bothered her in the entire time Zim had been here. Still, the sense of foreboding that had been plaguing me for days, now, returned stronger than ever, and as I watched her lay her hand on the front door's knob, I somehow knew that something horrible was going to happen. That I would never see my sister again. The thought chilled me to the bone._

"_Gaz!" I called. She turned, an impatient scowl marring her features. I wanted to run up to her, give her a hug, tell her I loved her, something, anything to show her that I cared about her just in case this was the last time. But I couldn't. We weren't that kind of family. If I held her, she would surely break. "Just…be careful."_

_The expression on her face was one of cautious bewilderment. I thought for a minute that she understood what I was trying to tell her, and that she was dealing with the same internal struggle. But then, I did need a new glasses prescription. _

_She smiled, that sad, wistful smile, "I'm always careful." She answered, and went through the door. _

_I stood there on the walk for a few minutes, watching the door. Then realizing that I was accomplishing nothing, I decided to follow Gaz's advice and made my way up the tree that over hung Zim's yard. The perfect vantage spot. The fit on the top branches was a little snugger than I remembered, but then, the last time I had sat there I was 6 years younger and a good 2 feet shorter. I made myself as comfortable as I could, the leaves encasing me like a cocoon, or a blanket, and switched on walky-talky portion of my watch. Gaz's voice came through the minute speakers, punctuated by static. I couldn't make out any picture, which worried me at first, until I realized that she wore the watch under the sleeve of her jacket., so the darkness I was watching was the inside of her sleeve. I relaxed and lay my head back against a branch, listening to my sister's running commentary of her progress._

"_Alright, loser, I'm in. No one seems to be home, though. They're probably down in the lab. Though I'm surprised Gir isn't up here watching Scary Monkey. Zim must have locked him into Duty mode, again. And I feel weird talking to myself like this. How can you not feel like an idiot every moment of the day?"_

_I scowled at her insult, but decided not to respond. I didn't have the energy to arguer, and I figured that as long as she was making fun of me, she was safe. I allowed myself the luxury of allowing my burning eyes to close behind my glasses. _

"_Ok, the base floor is empty, I'm gonna use the couch entrance to the labs." I heard a metallic rumble that was unmistakable the couch moving upwards to grant Gaz entrance. "God, I hate these tubes. Make me feel like I'm a spit ball or something."_

_Her voice was growing louder, but my brain wasn't fully responding to it. I subconsciously recognized what was going on, but the part of me that cared wasn't responding. _

"_Why the hell does everything have to be pink, anyhow? You would think that if the Irkens are so damned advanced, they would have some sort of fashion or interior decorating sense. Ugh." I heard faintly the 'whoosh' noise of the tube lift coming to a halt. "Alright, I'm in the labs. This room is empty, though I think I hear voices coming from down the hall…" Her voice was fading into my subconscious, my eyes and body were just so heavy, and the blanket of leaves was just so warm, like an embrace. _

"_Ok, I can see Zim," she was whispering, now, lulling me with her words, "he's talking on that giant screen to what looks like the Tallest. Saying something about preparations being almost complete for they're arrival. I'm gonna have to wait till he's down with his call to talk to him, I don't want the Tallest to see me….wait! What's that?!" I barely heard her, now, "Oh, Shit! Gir, what the hell!? Let go of me! Dib—" She was cut off. But I wouldn't realize it till it was too late. I was already asleep._

_I woke up hours later to a strange noise. It cut into my dreams like a siren, waking me with such a start that I fell from my hiding place in the tree. It took e a few minutes to realize my surroundings and the situation, and it was then that I realized that the sound was my sister screaming in agony. It invaded my senses in stereo, from my watch and from the air, suffocating me. It came from the ground beneath my feet and I knew that she was in the lower labs, if I could just get to her…_

_I ran towards the door to the house, in my haste, forgetting about the guard gnomes. I barely felt it as their lasers burnt my flesh, and their robotic arms tore at my clothes. I had one thing on my mind, only, and that was saving my sister. My sister whom I failed to protect. The only important person left in my life, I had to save her, I had to I had to I had to I…_

_One of the gnomes finally got a firm grip on my body, and pulled me towards it, holding me to its body in a sick parody of a lover's embrace. I fought against its grip, kicking and screaming, running on pure adrenalin, but it was unrelenting; if anything, it only tightened its hold. _

_After what couldn't have been longer than a few minutes, though it felt like an eternity, the screaming stopped, not fading away or dying out, but just stopping suddenly, as if someone had cut it with a knife. At the same moment, the gnome released me, dumping me into an ungraceful heap onto the ground. I was up in an instant, racing through the door and down the tube that still lay open from when my sister had entered the house hours before. _

_I was out of the elevator before it even came to a full stop and made my way at full speed, twisting and turning through the halls that would lead me to the only room that Gaz could be in where she would be made to experience such torture. The Experimentation Room. Images flashed through my mind as I ran, my brain trying foolishly to prepare me for what I may, and probably would find. My side ached, my lungs burned, but I still only had that one thought rushing though my mind, a mantra, a chant, 'find Gaz, find Gaz, find Gaz, find—_

_I came to a screeching halt at the entrance to the room. At first I thought it was empty, aside from the alien equipment that lined the walls, and that Zim had gotten a new lab table: a red one, to match the rest of the base. _

_It was only when I took a step forward and slipped on a puddle of sister's blood that I realized fully that I was too late. My mind accepted my defeat. My adrenaline rush dissipated and I allowed myself to truly see the ruminants of what was once my sister which were…everywhere. Blood and flesh and bone and cloth, the gore was splattered like abstract art across the walls and floor of the room. I felt my stomach contract and I spilled what little I had eaten that day onto the floor beside me, the taste burning me throat and mouth. I was too shocked to cry, too disappointed in myself to mourn. I felt such a deep sense of self-loathing that it almost consumed me. I had failed her. She had trusted me to save her and I failed her. I let her die. I might as well have been the one to cut her body to pieces. It was all my fault._

_I don't know how long I had sat there, on the floor of Zim's lab, my clothes once again turning dark with a loved one's blood, before I saw the glimmer. A bit of white among the red that lay on the examination table in the center of the room. I raised myself from the floor to examine it, my body creaking it's argument. I felt like I had aged 30 years in the past 30 minutes, as if my body was now that of an old man's instead of one that was barely 20. _

_I reached the table and stared aghast at what the glimmer had been. Gaz's skull necklace lay there, looking up at me with the cocky grin that the dead had. It had been deliberately and almost lovingly placed on Gaz's remains, perfectly clean of blood, despite the condition of the rest of the room. It was a message, and a clear one, and I was filled with such a blind rage at the sight of it and I couldn't help the scream that escaped my lips, then, one that began in that pre-historic part of my brain that told me that the only answer to such a challenge was to kill. And kill, I shall. _

_I snatched the necklace from the mass on the table and stormed from the house with a new purpose, destroying anything and everything I felt like as I left. Zim would pay for this, and he would pay dearly._

The gun was hot in my hand, burning me through my gloves, but I was relentless in my mission. I could hear Kala's ragged breathing beside me as we cut down Irken soldier after Irken soldier that stood in our path. The majority of our team had been diminished, leaving only Kala, Elizabeth, myself, a few injured soldiers that were on their last legs and Gir to make our way to the top of the base. To the Tallest. To Zim. We had lost communication with the rest of the teams hours ago, and could only pray that they were alright, although praying had never done much for anyone of us before.

There was blood stinging my eyes under my glasses and I wiped it away, frustratingly as the last Irken fell and the hall we were in ended at a door. We stopped for the moment, thankful for the breather, and began to quickly and efficiently tend to each other's wounds. Elizabeth attached her remote to the keycard lock on the wall beside the door and began the process of hacking into the system. Kala grabbed my face, not entirely gently, and began to administer treatment on the cut that I had acquired on my forehead. So that's where the blood had been coming from. I hadn't felt it.

"I hope the others are ok," she stated softly as she bandaged my wound.

"You know they're not." I answered, not meeting her gaze. To tell the truth I was uncomfortable with her closeness, with this intimacy. I had too much on my mind recently to deal with it. I knew that if she was too close I would destroy her. That's just what happened to the women in my life that I cared for. They all died. I pushed her away a little too roughly, and finished wrapping my head myself.

"That's horrible to think, Dib." She admonished, rubbing her shoulder where I had pushed her.

"It's called realism."

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm tired of your fatalistic attitude. Why fight if you don't think that you're going to win. Why raise everyone's hopes?"

"Because I know that I'm going to win, Kala. Everyone just probably will die before I do." I was about an inch from her face, hissing my words between clenched teeth in order to keep them between myself and her, "As for hope, it's they're own faults for believing in something so asinine to begin with, not mine for allowing them an excuse to believe."

I watched as her jaw clenched in anger, and I felt a small pang of guilt for being a cause. I pushed it away. She opened her mouth to say something further, but was cut off by a small beeping noise and Elizabeth's lilting voice stating, "Done!"

I made motion for the troops to rise and prepare to enter the room. If my calculations were correct, this was exactly where we wanted to be. This was the beginning of the end. This was where we were meet Zim.

I entered the room first, at a crouch, and seeing that it was empty for the moment, motioned the rest of my troops to follow me. We made our way along the wall cautiously, too involved in watching for Irken reinforcements to really notice Gir wander off into the center of the room. It was only when we heard the android's small voice shout, "Mini-moose!" did we realize our folly. It was a trap, of course it was a trap, how could I have been so stupid as to think that it wasn't a trap—

Mini-moose floated in the center of the room. It gave a small squeak of recognition at Gir as the robot made his way over to it. There was a strange purple light surrounding the small floating creature. A force field. The trigger.

"Gir!" I shouted, "No, don't touch the moose!" But he wouldn't listen. He was too excited to see his long lost friend. I made a move to go after him, but Elizabeth was one step ahead of me, lunging at the robot and catching him around the midsection, landing in a heap. The force of the fall, however, knocked loose the small ball at the top of Gir's antenna. We all watched in horror as it bounced across the floor once, twice, three times, before coming to a roll right to the base of the purple dome. It hit a crack and wobbled for a heart-stoppingly tense instant before the fates made their decision that this was not our lucky day and the small ball tapped the force field ever so slightly. But it was enough. The room exploded into light and noise and Irkens came from everywhere.

I ordered for my troops to fire at will and followed suit, making my way towards Elizabeth. She was holding onto Gir tightly with one arm, which shooting wildly with the other. He aim was perfect, despite the struggling robot who still didn't realize why he couldn't play with his friend, but Gir was creating a blind spot, which could be deadly if any of the enemy soldiers picked up on it.

At that instant, as if reading my mind, one of the small green aliens turned towards the girl, aiming for her blind side. I shouted a warning and let loose a shot, just as Elizabeth was making an attempt to dodge the enemy fire, but it was too late, The laser pierced her flesh right below her left shoulder, coming through, back to front. She tensed and arched in pain and then fell limp to the ground. Gir's screams matched my own as I ran towards the alien, letting off round after round into him, even though I knew he was dead by the second shot. After he was nothing but a pile of burnt flesh, I made my way over to Gir and Elizabeth who was, amazingly, still breathing.

I pressed my hands onto the wound, even though the laser had cauterized it so that there was no blood, and no amount of pressure could close the gaping hole that was in the girl's chest. Gir was sobbing into her side, exclaiming apology after apology. Saying how he didn't really want to see Mini-moose anyhow, please be ok, please be ok. He lifted his face and pulled a sticky looking lolly pop from his head. "You can have my candy! It's chocolate bubble gum! Your favorite!"

Elizabeth smiled, though her face was wracked with pain. She opened her mouth, but no words could form. She settled for laying her hand on the small robot's head. I watched in silence as her face contorted in agony, her throat moving as if she were choking and then her entire body relaxed completely, her hand falling limp onto the ground.

I barely registered the silence that had grown in the room. The tense anticipation. All I heard were Gir's pitiful wails and sobs and pleads for Elizabeth not to stop, not to be like Gazzy, not to stop working. I reached out my hand to the small android. "Gir." I said, softly. He kept on with his sobbing, either not registering my voice or ignoring me. I tried a little louder. "Gir." He still didn't react. I tried a third time. "Gir!"

However, this last time a voice joined mine. A voice that sent shivers up my spine and made Gir lift his head so suddenly that I could head the snap of the gears in this neck trying to keep up.

"Master?" He asked, wonder in his voice. The title was not directed towards me, however, but to the small green alien that was lowering from a platform from the ceiling. I felt my body tense at the sight of him, my fists clenching and unclenching at their own accord. I reminded myself to be patient. To wait until the right moment before attacking.

Zim's platform reached the ground with a hydraulic hiss, and he stepped off, towards Gir. "Yes, Gir, it's me." The robot stood and turned to face his old Master. "That's right, Gir, come on, it's time to come home." He held his arms out to the robot in a welcoming gesture.

I looked at Gir and noticed something off. His eyes were flashing colours; blue to red to blue to red. His small hands were clenching and unclenching, mirroring my own. All at once he lunged towards Zim, his eyes flashing red, laser guns and rockets rising from his head and shoulders. He stopped directly in front of the alien, small chest heaving, all weaponry pointed at Zim's face.

A look of fear flashed across Zim's features briefly and for a moment time seemed to stop as Gir decided whether or not his programming would allow him to blow his Master to smithereens. The second was wasted, however, as his eyes flashed again and all weaponry lowered as the small robot broke down again into sobs, his small fists banging against Zim's chest like an angry and distraught child.

"Why, Master?!" He cried, "Why do you kill all Gir's friends?! Why?! I want them back! Give me back my friends! I want my piggy, I want Gazzy, I want 'Liz'beth! Give them back! I hate you! I hate you! I hate…" His pleas dissolved into halting sobs, and Zim's brow furrowed in silent contemplation before calmly reaching down and, using the small switch at the base of his neck, shut the android off. Gir fell to the ground with a clank, his eyes blank and dull.

Zim sighed again and then raised his eyes from his failed servant. Those eyes scanned the room, and the bodies of both Irken and human soldier alike before landing on me. His mouth then formed its trademark zipper-toothed smile. "Hello, Dib." He greeted, false warmth in his voice, "Glad to see you could make it."

-------

A/n. Whoosh. That was only slightly draining. Nothing like effectively killing off three characters in one shot. Man. Man o man. Whoosh. That's all I can say. I need a cigarette after writing something like that. As always, please R and R. Next chapter should be up soon, as should the first chapter of my other story. Yay!

Ps—this chapter alone was 17 pages, bringing the grand total up to 62…maybe I will break a hundred, after all…hmmmmm….


	11. part ten

A/n: Well, here we go again ladies and gents. This story is drawing to a close. This is the last chapter before the ending(s). This is also the last flashback part. I was going to actually split this into two, but felt that it would be redundant to do so, since both take place at the same location. So instead I'm going for the ultimate challenge: the flashback within a flashback. Muahaha.

Oh, and just so you all know, the first chapter of my next story, "You Only Live Twice" is up and running. It features a mid-teens cast and is a lot less angsty and a bit more in character than this story, though is still pretty much on the serious side. So everyone should check that out. Yup yup, you should.

Ps: Thank you so so much to Dibsthe1, Spectacal, Senri, and Only a Handful of Time for your awesome comments. You all rock, hardcore.

DISCLAIMER: I'm dissin' my claim, yo! (Translation: I don't own IZ.)

PART TEN

_I sat on the cliff like hill that over looked the city. I had made my way up here often, throughout my life. This is where my mother had taken me to look at the stars, and where my family camped out to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, before my mother's death. This was where Gaz and I's awesome escape from the Pig Girl part of my father's labs had ended up. This was where I experienced my first kiss when I was 15. The girl's name had been Alice. Her hair had been brown and she had freckles on her nose. Zim had helped me work up the courage to ask her out, if only because he thought that I would shut up about her if she became my "love pig". This was where Zim and Gaz and I had celebrated our graduations. We made a fire and roasted marshmallows, which Zim didn't understand the point in and Gir ate the majority of. This place was important to me. This place held some of the happiest memories of my life. _

_Conversely, this where I had buried what little remained of my sister. _

_This is also where Kala found me after I had left my army's final "hoorah" party._

_But we'll get to that, later._

_The day after I had found the mutilated remains of Gaz in Zim's basement labs, the actual invasion began. The Irkens had attacked from space, first. A laser shot from the sky, eradicating buildings and vaporizing people. Panic and chaos erupted throughout the city. Looting and vandalism ran rampant. People were crushed and killed in a mass effort to evacuate. I had stood in the middle of my street, watching as the people flowed around me, salmon attempting to swim upstream, lemmings running towards their doom. It was all I could do not to laugh hysterically. Not to grab them and shout in their faces, "SEE? I TOLD you they were coming! I TOLD you this was going to happen, but did you believe me?! You DESERVE your fates, you ignorant FOOLS!"_

_But I didn't. I just stood. And watched. And waited._

_After the first day, the ground attacks began. The Irkens were everywhere, They captured our leaders, our teachers, our scientists: anyone who would compromise the Tallest's positions as Supreme Rulers: anyone who would have vast knowledge of the old way of life--information that could and would taint the minds of the Empire's newest slaves. There was a transmission sent out, showing their executions. _

_My father, of course, being the world's most famous scientist, was one of the first killed. He was shot in the head, the laser going straight though his skull. I felt no emotion, watching him fall. Felt no remorse. How could I? I hadn't seen the man in months, I couldn't reach him after I had found Gaz's remains—the man died thinking that both of his children lived. If he remembered that he had children at all. He was still my father, and I still loved him, but it was the _idea_ if him that I cared about. When it came to the actual man…I had no real opinion. How could I mourn someone I didn't even know?_

_I managed to avoid capture basically by pure sneakiness. I used the information that I knew about Zim to my advantage. I knew the Irkens' limitations. I knew how their slimy little minds worked. In essence, I could _become_ them, if I truly felt like it. I would basically just make my way to parts of the city that they had already been. The Irkens, by nature, were consumers. They had no use for what they already had absorbed. _

_A few weeks after I discovered Gir on what would be my final visit to the ruined skeleton that was once my greatest enemy's base, I took to the sewers and began my infiltration and liberation of the newly founded Irken slave camps. I began to form my army. The rest, as they say, is history. _

_I sat at the site of my sister's makeshift grave that final night, weaving the chain of her necklace in between my fingers. When I buried her at the base of the giant oak that stood on this hill, I had debated burying her necklace with her. She hadn't been without it since she was seven years old, when she bought it as a morbid joke to herself with some money a family member had sent us in sympathy for our mothers "accident". Part of me knew she would want it in the afterlife, if there were such a thing, yet something kept me from placing it in that hole. Something wanted me to keep it. I wondered if it was the same part of her that spoke when she decided to adopt my abandoned trench coat all those years ago. At any rate, the necklace stayed with me, in my pocket, a constant reminder of my sister, and most of all, my mission. _

"_I tried to visit Mom the other day," I spoke aloud, looking over the edge of the hill at the blackness that had once been a city, "the cemetery isn't there anymore, though. The Irkens must have destroyed it. After all, what use do their slaves have for places of memories—all they do is remind them that they used to be free." My knees were to my chest, my elbows resting on them, the necklace draped between my hands. "So I guess you'll have to tell Mom 'hi' for me next time you see her. Tell her that I love her and all. Yeah, I know you hate the mushy stuff, but just do it, alright? It means a lot. Ok, fine, I'll clean your room for a week whenever I get where you are, alright? Thanks. Brat."_

_I allowed myself to fall backwards to lay on the grass. The stars were dark, tonight, the moon a Cheshire Cat silver grin. I smiled back at it, mournfully. _

"_Oh yeah, it's after midnight, isn't it? Happy birthday, sis. I would have gotten you something, but I've been short on time—that whole 'planning an invasion and running an army' thing." I chuckled, "Ok, you caught me. I did get you something. Or, rather, am planning you something. A party. Tomorrow at Dad's lab. It's gonna be huge. And noisy. Hell, there might even be fireworks!"_

_I sighed and sat up again, "Yeah, you're right, I shouldn't joke around like this. It will be dangerous, I know, but…in the end it will be worth it. Our people will be free again. Or will at least have taken the first step to getting there. And I'll be giving you the best present I can think of. You always loved revenge."_

_I rested my head in my arms, the necklace now dangling limply from one hand. "They're all having their last bit of fun, now. I got talked into giving a toast after dinner—no I _didn't _scream like a howlin' monkey, thank you very much. Yes, I know I did last time I had to give a speech, but that was for graduation, and as I recall, it was because_ someone_ thought it would be funny to put a pincher bug down the back of my gown while pretending to give me a hug. No, I don't know who that could have been, either. Can I finish telling my story, now? Thanks. Anyhow, I had to give this toast, and as I looked around the room, I just felt this deep seated feeling that…these people wouldn't be coming back after tomorrow. That is was it. This was 'goodbye'. I don't think that I could handle that. I don't think that I can deal with 'goodbye'."_

"_So you'd rather say nothing?" A voice broke through the silence behind me. I spun around, startled, and spotted the shadowed form of Kala leaning against the rusted remains of what used to be a '92 Cavalier. _

"_How long have you been standing there?" I was defensive. After years of being called 'crazy' for most every little thing—talking aloud to myself being a prominent one—the realization that I had been caught talking to my dead sister caused me to instinctively raise my hackles. _

_Kala chose to ignore the tone in my voice and just shrugged, pushing herself off the car and walking towards me. "Long enough." She sat beside me on the ground, plucking a blade of grass and twirling it between her fingers. We sat in silence for a few moments and then she spoke again, her voice low and soothing, as if speaking to a horse that might spook, "You were talking to Gaz?"_

"_Yeah." Gaz's pendant lay snug in the palm of my right hand, the chain wrapped around my fist. My left hand searched the ground for pebbles. Finding one, I tossed it into the air a few times before pitching it off the hill. _

"_So you can expose your soul to the dead, but not the living?" Kala asked._

"_I think I've exposed enough to you, Kala, haven't I?" I replied, coldly, still not facing her. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I saw thee hurt written on her face as she caught my double meaning. _

_She swallowed and forced her voice to be indifferent, "Yes, I suppose you have." She turned away from me, looking instead out over the cliff at the nothingness that remained below us. _

_The silence returned, then, this time laced with awkward pain. I felt guilty for hurting her, but I reminded myself that it was for the best. Living with Gaz all those years, I learned much about the art of distance. About how causing someone pain and pushing them away made it easier for you when they finally decided that they didn't care anymore. When they finally left, as it was inevitable that they would, if you truly cared for them. _

_Finally, I couldn't take it any longer and I broke the silence, again. "This is where I fought Zim for the last time."_

_Her surprise was expected, "Huh? I thought that you hadn't seen him before that transmission since before the war?"_

_I chuckled, "Do you really think that I would have admitted that I was stupid enough to try and kill a hologram?"_

_She raised an eyebrow at me. I continued:_

**_It was the night that I buried Gaz. I was sitting on the hill, facing the oak, my back to the rest of the world. My hands were covered in blood and dirt and as I wiped some of the sweat from my brow, the dark red mixture stayed behind, leaving a mark not unlike war paint. I fought against my stomach, trying to keep it in one place, trying not to think about what I had had to do to get what little remained of my sister up onto this hill. How I had to scoop up the mess with a small shovel, placing it on a sheet, which was in no time stained red with her blood. _**

_**Zim was no where to be found as I completed this grisly task. His base lay completely empty. Though I had the feeling that he was somewhere—perhaps on his orbiting space station—watching me from hidden cameras. Waiting for me to leave before returning. Not wanting to face my wrath. If that were the case, then Zim was smarter than I originally thought. **_

**_I had carried the sheet up to the hill, rolled and tucked under my arm like a football in an attempt to keep it from any curious eyes. That was all I needed right now—for people to notice the 'crazy Membrane boy' carrying a bloody sheet with his sister no where to be found. Though luck was on my side that night, and there was no one on the streets. But then, it was about 3am by that point. Anyone who _was_ out was too drunk to care._**

**_I dug the hole with my hands, placed in the sheet, and covered it, again, all without shedding a tear. I was in a state of emotional shock, or something. Either that or my rage outbid my sorrow for control. Either way, while I was in mourning, the tears would not come, even though the tightness in my chest refused to loosen._**

**_I stood, brushing the dirt off of my pants, and heard someone clear they're throat behind me. Terrified that it was the police, I spun around quickly, hiding my hands behind my back, only to face someone I wanted to see even less. _**

"**_You've got a lot of fuckin' nerve, Zim." I growled._**

_**The small alien had the decency to look sheepish, guilty. I noticed somewhere in the back of my mind that he was wearing, once again, an Irken uniform and was sans disguise. I thought nothing of it, though. My hands came out from their hiding places and curled into fists at my side.**_

"_**I…came to pay my respects." Zim explained, calmly. **_

"**_She doesn't need your '_respects_', Zim." I stated, between gritted teeth, "After what you've done, you don't deserve to be _near_ her. I suggest you go before I leave you in the same condition you left her."_**

_**He sighed and put a gloved hand to his forehead, "Look, Dib, I know how this seems—"**_

"**_You 'know how this seems?' Excuse me? You mean you _didn't_ ruthlessly murder my sister? You mean you _didn't_ leave her mutilated corpse in the basement of your house to _rot_?" My voice was rising. Every second it became harder to control my anger. _**

"_**I was under orders." His voice was calm, his eyes averted. **_

"**_Oh! You were 'under orders'! That makes it _all better_." My arms were moving on their own accord, waving in the air with the force of my bitter sarcasm._**

"**_You don't understand!" His voice now matched mine in volume, his cool and distanced façade crumbling, "The Tallests _saw_ Gir discover Gaz hiding while I was completing my transmission. Gir wanted to play and you know how loud he gets when you tell him 'no'. He caught the attention of the Tallest, and they decided that they wanted a sacrifice to prove my loyalty. If I didn't comply they would have killed me. I had to do it, Dib, alright? I didn't want to, but I had to."_**

"_**You chose your life over hers?" I growled, disdainfully, "Fuck you, Zim. Just…fuck you."**_

**_His temper finally broke, "Do you think I _enjoyed_ listening to her scream, Dib-filth? Huh? Do you think I _enjoyed_ the pain in her eyes? Do you think I _enjoyed_ her blood on my hands?"_**

"_**It wouldn't surprise me."**_

"_**Oh, and where were you, Dib, huh? Where was the 'protector of Earth' while his sister writhed in agony under the claws of the 'evil alien'? I know what a control freak you are, Dib. I know there's no way you would have let her come to my base alone, so where were you? Where were you as your sister's blood painted my floor?"**_

_**He had me there. I felt that familiar wave of self-loathing wash over me. I lowered my eyes, "I fell asleep." I muttered.**_

"_**What? What was that? I couldn't hear you." He put his hand to his ear, mocking me.**_

"_**I said I fell asleep, alright?" I shouted, my chest heaving.**_

**_He had the gall to laugh. "You…you fell asleep? You sent your sister into the lion's den and then decided to take a nap? Oh, that's rich, Dib-human, even for you. You fell asleep. Heh." His laughter died down into amused chuckles. I felt the anger rising in my chest, filling every inch of me. The rage was almost uncontrollable. He continued to speak, "You really are a complete failure. In the end, I didn't kill your sister, Dib; you _let _her die."_**

_**That was it. That was the last straw. I lunged at Zim, flinging my body towards him with all of my might. I caught him around the waist and found myself on the other side of him, face down in the dirt. I pushed myself up, feeling blood run freely from my nose. Turning around, I saw the figure of Zim waver and flicker and then return to it' solid looking state. **_

**_The alien laughed again, "Foolish human, do you think that I'm stupid enough to come here, myself, and risk injury? I am sending this transmission by hologram, which you _still_ haven't seemed to have learned about. Idiot."_**

_**I glared at him though my dirt-smudged glasses, the blood running from my nose from the fall and from my hands from the force that I was digging my nails into my palms. How dare he mock me. How dare he laugh. I spit on the ground in front of him, and age old gesture, but the only one that could truly express the utter loathing that I felt for my former best friend. **_

"_**Next time we meet, Zim, you will die," I threatened. **_

**_He smiled smugly, "I look forward to it, Dib, if only because it is so _amusing_ to watch you fail." And with that said, the image of Zim flicked and disappeared, leaving me alone on the hill once again._**

_I could feel Kala's eyes on me. The whole time I had been speaking, I hadn't looked at her, instead choosing to focus my attention on the city far below us. I turned to her, now, meeting her gaze._

"_Why didn't you tell us this?" She asked, bewildered._

_I shrugged, "It didn't seem that important. And besides, like I said: I was embarrassed. I almost broke my nose attacking something that wasn't even real."_

"_Wasn't it?" she countered, cryptically Before I could ask her what she meant, she stood, brushing the dirt and leaves from her backside. "I'm going back to the base. I promised Gretch that I would help her run damage control—make sure no one ends up hung over and what not. You coming?"_

_I shook my head, "Nah, I think I'll stay here a little longer. I need some time to think."_

_She frowned, "You need to spend this last night with your troops, Dib. With your friends. They want to see their leader. They want to share drinks and tell stories. They want to know that no matter what happens, tomorrow, everything will be alright."_

"_And what if it isn't? Do you want me to lie to them? Give them false hope? Pretend that everyone _isn't _going to die, tomorrow? That I'm _not_ leading them on a suicide mission? Is that what you want, Kala? Aren't I damned enough?"_

_Her features grew hard, cold. "It seems like you're determined on damning yourself either way, Dib. If you decide to get out of your ivory tower and meet the rest of us here on Earth, you know where to find me. Have fun with your self-pity. Tell your sister I say 'hi'." And with that she spun on her heels and left, retreating back down the hill to the city. _

_I watched after her for a few minutes and then turned back towards the view. "Yes, Gaz, I know she's right," I sighed, "But what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to look those people in the eye knowing that I'm sending them to their deaths?" I furrowed my brow in irritation, "Oh, don't you start, alright? You _forced_ me to let you go, remember? _I _wanted to go home."_

_I rested my head on my arms and closed my eyes. "Sometimes I just think that it's not worth it, Gaz, ya know" Sometimes I just…don't want to care."_

_The world around me was silent, and I realized, once again, that I was speaking to nothing but air._

"Hello, Dib." Zim greeted, false warmth in his voice, "Glad to see you could make it."

"Zim." I acknowledged, my voice dripping with rage and disgust. I stood, wiping Elizabeth's blood onto my pants.

"I was sent down by the Tallests to greet you. They ask an audience with the human foolish enough to attack their base. Come, we mustn't keep them waiting." The alien began to turn to leave. I made a small motion with my hand behind my back to Kala, praying that she was watching for it. I then reached for the handgun that rested in my belt. Zim turned back when he heard the gun cock.

"We're not going anywhere, Zim." I stated.

He chuckled, "Oh, Dib, and what army is going to stop me from taking you?" He glanced pointedly across the room, "It seems as if yours has been destroyed." He made a disapproving clicking noise and shook his head in mock disappointment. "People really need to stop trusting you with their lives—you always just let them down in the end, you know."

I gritted my teeth, keeping my gun trained on his head. I needed to keep his eyes on me, away from Kala. "You're not baiting me this time, Zim. I'm not falling for it."

"Ah," he feigned surprise, "finally learning how to keep your emotions in check, huh? Good thing, too—I already turned off Gir, so he's not here for you to take it out on."

I could feel the gun waver in my hands, slightly, just for an instant. I narrowed my gaze. "How do you know about that?" I demanded.

"I know many things, Dib-stink. The eyes and ears of the Irken Empire are everywhere. We are omnipotent. "

"Bullshit." I sneered, noticing Kala reaching her position behind Zim. Just a little farther… "Your race isn't anything but a bunch of over-zealous consumer whores. You are a plague on the universe; a disease; a parasite. You take and take and give nothing in return. Omnipotent? Hardly. You're nothing but a bunch of mislead locusts." Kala was directly behind him, now, crouching in an attack stance. In one more second she would spring and we would have him right where we wanted him. Just one more second. One more—

"You dare call ZIM an insect?" the alien raged, sounding much like he did when we were children, "You want PROOF of Irken omnipotence? Fine. I shall show you proof." His eyes narrowed, dangerously, hate making them shine like rubies.

In the instant that Kala chose to attack, leaping at the alien's back with all of her force, he deployed one of his spider legs. It shot backwards from his pak, it's razor sharp tip piercing through Kala's skull with a sickeningly wet sound, as if it were a cantaloupe that had just been impaled by a javelin. Her eyes shot wide open in surprise and pain, a choked "kkhek" noise escaping from her throat. Zim pulled his metal appendage free, making a wet sucking sound, and Kala fell heavily to the ground, as if she were nothing more than an overgrown doll.

Zim turned his head, looking over his shoulder at his handy-work. "Damn," he swore, "I must have miscalculated. I hadn't wanted it to be that quick." He shrugged, turning back, "Ah well. The result's the same, anyway." A smug smile rose upon his lips, seeing my reaction. Watching as my mouth gaped, my chest heaved as I struggled to breath, as my mind fought to realize what had just happened. "Ah. I see you are finally in awe of me. It's about time you realize my superiority. Now, come. The Tallests are waiting."

With that statement, Zim turned his back on me, and began to make his way back to the platform lift he had entered the room by. On his way, he stepped casually over Kala's body, his boot causing little ripples in the puddle of blood that had by now mostly surrounded her. That was what did it. That was what caused me to come to reality, to realize what had just occurred. That was what triggered every ounce of rage that I had to consume my entire being: his complete lack of respect for the dead. The way he just stepped over her as if she were some tree branch that just happened to be in his way. His complete lack of acknowledgement that she was once a living, breathing creature.

I let out a guttural primal scream as I launched myself at Zim's retreating figure. My eyes were blind with hatred as I swung at him time and time again, my fists meeting flesh every time. Adrenaline coursed through my body as I turned him to face me and punched him in the face, sending him backwards to the ground. I was down with him in an instant, my hands around his throat, my face locked in an ugly grimace.

"Who the hell do you think you are?!" I demanded, punctuating every word by slamming Zim's head into the floor. His hands were on my wrists, his eyes glazing over in disorientation and pain. "What gives you the right, huh? You fucking monster!"

An ugly pinkish stain was growing on the floor underneath Zim's head, drops of the substance flying upwards and speckling my glasses. Tears were forming in my eyes, the familiar hot pressure building in my sinuses as I watched the light begin to fade behind Zim's ocular implants. His face was covered in his own blood and drool, his lids half closed. I realized in the back of my mind that the hands on my wrists were not attempting to pull my hands away, but instead urging them tighter. I shrugged off the thought and focused on my dwindling rage. I felt so many emotions at once, I had been holding so much back for so long that it all wanted, now, to come out. I felt as if I would be torn apart with the pressure.

A lump was in my throat, causing my words to come out in choked sobs, my blows becoming weaker as the adrenaline rush faded. "Why, Zim? Why did you make me do this? Why couldn't things have just stayed as they were? Why did you make me kill you? Why did you want to die?"

I was worn out, my body and mind exhausted, and I allowed my body to rest, covering the small form that lay beneath me, my head resting lightly on his shoulder, my hands still on his throat. His breath was laboured, wheezing. It was almost over. Soon my revenge would be complete. Just a few more seconds…

"Because it's her birthday, Dib," I heard him whisper faintly, struggling to get the words out around my crushing hands and his crushed larynx, "And she…she always did like…revenge."

I raised my head from his shoulder, the expression on my face one of total bewilderment. My former friend smiled slightly before shutting his eyes. His mouth moved and I leaned forward in order to hear, my cheek and ear mere millimeters from his lips.

"Be careful, Dib, there is…more going on here…than you think. Your role in this is…crucial…don't…don't let them confuse you. Don't let them take…your soul."

He let out one more wheezing cough and then I felt the slightest pressure as his lips brushed against my face. A line I once read, "You betray me with a kiss" flashed in my mind, but the thought was soon pushed away by the sound of Zim's last breath, his body seeming to deflate from the force.

I sat there for a few seconds, my hands still around the small alien's neck, my mind trying to comprehend what had just occurred. Suddenly, from behind me, the sound of applause was heard. The walls seemed to melt away, revealing cold metal, punctuated every few feet by small projectors. My surroundings had been nothing more than a hologram, and I knew then that the trap that had been laid for my small army was more intricate than originally thought. I loosened my hold on Zim's body and spun around to find the source of the sound.

Two extremely tall Irkens stood behind me, clapping, their faces identical expressions of smug mockery. I recognized them as the Tallests Purple and Red, and their presence surprised me very little in comparison to the mockery of evolution that was situated behind them.

It was a giant Irken brain, pink and fluxuating. Wires covered almost every inch of it, a giant pak, covered in red spots affixed directly in its center. I stood transfixed, horrified. I knew what this was, but I shuddered to think of what it meant. If the Irkens had brought a Control Brain _here_, then that meant that not only was my father's old lab the main Irken post on Earth, but that Earth's take over meant more than originally thought. That this was more than the Tallests being bored and looking up their 'good friend', Zim. Instead, I had found myself in the middle of something very, very complex and also very, very dangerous.

"Human Dib," the Brain spoke, it's voice deep and resonating. The Tallest ceased their clapping and stood in silent respect, their faces still masks of snide hatred, "you have been deemed worthy."

---

A/n: OK, yeah, I'm mean. It's a cliffhanger. But remember kids, the next chapter(s) is the end. If I continued writing now, this chapter would be the end and it would be hella long.

I'm not sure if I quoted that one line correctly and I'm hoping that I didn't take the slight parallel too far, there. I've envisioned Dib with a bit of a Jesus complex (or a martyr complex in general), and with the reference I had made in an earlier chapter to the 30 pieces of silver thing, I though it would be the best way to explain Zim's dying with a kiss and have it not be interpreted in a Slash sense.

Although, if I needed to explain it, then I probably didn't do it clearly enough in the chapter…hmm….Ah well, I'm prolly just being paranoid.

The next chapter will be up sometime after Xmas. I have to write two for the price of one (and make them good), and get the next chapter of YOLT up, as well. Plus I'll be away from my computer for a few days doing that whole visiting family thing… But yeah, still, the ending is a doozy, so hopefully it will be worth the wait. (And I can do the movie in my head justice when I put it on paper…)

Thank you again for everyone's reviews, and hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday.


	12. part eleven1

A/n: It's funny. There's such a drastic mood difference between this story and YOLT, that I have to take a day or two in between trying to write either update to get my head in the right place. I don't think that I'll be trying to do anything like that, again. (Updating two different stories at the same time, that is…)

But, well, here it is, people. The last chapter. Well, one of them, anyhow. This is the "bad ending". Basically—pure angst. The next chapter is the "good" ending, but is still not all flowers and sunshine. Ah well.

Time for my final thanks—Dibsthe1, Maran Zelde, Spectacal, Only a Handful of Time, and The Fic Lord. You all rock.

Disclaimer: I don't own Zim. Duh.

PART ELEVEN

I had the sense that the Brains, in all of their putrid, pulsating glory, were smiling at me with sick satisfaction as they praised my "worthiness" as I stood facing them, my chin held high with a kind of stubborn pride. I wiped my hands on my pants, aggravated at the fact that, though I knew there was nothing on them, I could still feel some sort of grime that just wouldn't come off, no matter how hard I tried. My mind was full of chaos, voices screaming, demanding that I give their deaths some kind of meaning; to attack and destroy the Brains and the Tallests now, when they weren't expecting it. However, my overstated curiosity won out and I did just what my enemy predicted by opening my mouth and asking a question.

"Worthy of what?"

The Brains seemed to chuckle, "Worthy, of course, of being the first of your people to witness the dawning of a new era—it is no coincidence that the great Irken race have come to this small planet. We have not only conquered a planet consisting mostly of our greatest weakness, but have enslaved it's extremely tall inhabitants. By achieving thus, the Irkens shall grow stronger; more powerful. And you, Human Dib—you are to thank for it all."

I was growing irritated at the speech, and uncomfortable under the glares of the Tallests, who remained silent as their leader gloated. "What the hell are you talking about?" I demanded.

"It is you, Human, who have called to us. It is you who brought this small, pitiful planet to our attention. You are responsible for the fall of your people, and the rise of ours."

Nothing was making sense. How could _I_ be the one who brought Earth to the Irkens' attention? _Zim_ was the one who was sent to conquer it, and when he was, they didn't even know for sure that there was a planet out here. I voiced these thoughts to the Brains who let out another wave of condescension.

"How sad it is," the Brains mused, "to find a species of creatures so tall, yet so ignorant to the universe around them." The Tallests began to sicker. I sent them a look that would have caused their heads to explode, had I telekinetic powers. "However," the Brains continued, causing the Tallests' mirth to cease, "we shall humor you this time, Human, and explain to you what the rest of your species will never discover: the universe as a whole is a collective unit. What happens on one end of the galaxy, after a time, will come to affect the other end. For example--the shock wave produced by a star exploding will destroy every planet in the vicinity until becoming weak enough that it will only cause a minor earthquake on a planet on the direct opposite end of the universe. It may not have much of an affect, but it will still exist.

"Much like every planet is connected, so are the minds of every creature in the universe. We are all linked together, our thoughts overlapping, silent voices traveling hundreds of miles, jumping from mind to mind, trying to find someone who will listen. Most creatures' brains are, on average, the same size, and therefore are not equipped to produce the energy needed to hear these distant thoughts—or to produce an energy wave strong enough for others to hear. However, there are some exceptions, Ourselves being one. We consist of only brain matter, and therefore are able to both receive and transmit these signals, enabling Us to control Our vast empire."

"That's very nice, but what does it all have to do with me?" I demanded. My hands were beginning to sting from the constant friction as I rubbed them against my pants, but still that feeling would not go away.

"You have an abnormally large head for a human, do you not?" The Brains asked. The familiar protest that my head was _not_ big rose in my throat, the result of years of conditioning, however, this time I kept mouth shut. Now was not the time be distracted by my own ranting.

The Brains took my silence an agreement and continued, "An abnormally large head to, perhaps, encase an abnormally large brain?"

I felt my eyes grow wide as what the Brains were insinuating finally began to sink in. If a larger brain meant a greater ability to receive and transmit signals across space, did that mean…

"You were able to hear my thoughts?" I breathed, sudden horror overwhelming me.

"Exactly. That is how we knew there was a planet out here, beyond our vast knowledge of space. We heard your thoughts and were amazed that there was a creature in this galaxy who felt such utter revulsion towards his own species. We knew that this was something great—a creature who would sacrifice everything to reach its own selfish, prideful goal."

What sort of trickery was this? Revulsion towards my own species? My own selfish goal? What were the Brains getting at? I felt a familiar anger grow inside of me.

"I don't understand what you're talking about," I shouted "I was trying to _save_ mankind, not damn it!"

"Did you not rise yourself above the level of the average human? Did you not see mankind as a lame horse, begging to be put out of its misery?" The Brains demanded, "You can lie with your words, Human, but your thoughts betray you. You play at being the martyr, when in reality, you are nothing but a conceited elitist, selfishly fighting for the recognition you feel you so righteously deserve."

"You're wrong," I growled, spitting the words between clenched teeth.

"Are we?"

With that question, the walls of the room wavered and shifted, as my senses were assaulted by a barrage of images and words. Scenes from my past played before me, my own thoughts and statements; inner monologues kept not so inner echoing in my ears: biting my tongue to keep back admissions of hate at my mother's grave, my lack of remorse at watching my father's execution, making love to Kala on the floor of the gym, heedless of the death that was going on outside in the world around us.

"_This is _my_ fight, not yours."_

I clutched my head in my hands, my eyes shut tight, my hands over my ears, trying to keep the information out. Still it played within my mind, the backs of my eyelids serving as projection screens, my eardrums performing the duties of speakers.

"_You see?! Actual proof that all the things I've been saying are actually right! Finally, a way to prove that I'm that I'm…"_

"_I think I've exposed enough to you, Kala, haven't I?"_

My own voice, my own words, my own damnation.

"_On one hand, I'll be saving myself, on the other, I'd be saving…_them_."_

"_Do you want me to coddle you and hold your hand? Cos it's not going to help, Gaz, it just won't. You're 18 years old, damn it; it's time for you to realize that not everything is going to go your way! Our mother killed herself, our father doesn't love us, and Zim is the bad guy. Just fuckin' accept it, already!" _

There was nothing I could do to stop the images from coming. I felt my knees grow weak as I lowered myself to the floor, still clutching my head, shaking it from side to side like a dog, trying to make it stop. A low moan escaped my lips.

"_You guys are just begging in to meet the moose!" _

"_Sometimes I just think that it's not worth it, Gaz, ya know? Sometimes I just…don't want to care."_

I could hear the Tallests' mocking laughter as I suffered. As much as I tried to fight it, the realization that the Brains were right was pushing at my brain—I had caused this. I was the reason that my civilization had fallen. I was the reason that everyone I cared about was dead. That was why my hands felt dirty—they were saturated in blood, not only from those I had killed myself, but with that from the entire human race. I was the monster, not Zim, not the Brains, not the hairy kid next door; me.

"_SEE? I TOLD you they were coming! I TOLD you this was going to happen, but did you believe me?! You DESERVE your fates, you ignorant FOOLS!"_

"_Because I know that I'm going to win, Kala. Everyone just probably will die before I do. As for hope, it's they're own faults for believing in something so asinine to begin with, not mine for allowing them an excuse to believe."_

I couldn't take it any longer, "ENOUGH!" I shouted, the force of the word seeming to rip the lining from my throat. Instantly the images stopped, the room fading back into its metallic normalcy. I lay in a pitiful heap at the Tallests' feet, curled into myself like a fetus, tears and snot running down my face in rivers. My glasses were fogged over, and I had handfuls of my own hair clenched in my fists, but I didn't care. I was a fraud. Everything I had worked for had only caused what I was trying to prevent. What did it matter anymore? What did it even matter to begin with?

"Do you understand, now, Dib?" The brains asked, their voice calming, soothing. "Do you understand what you did?" The voice seemed to change then, other voices joining it, different tones, pitches, and inflections merged together, forming a bitter and eerie harmony. I could pick out the familiar sounds of Zim, Gaz, Kala, my mother. "DO you understand what you are? Do you understand what you have to do?"

I did. I understood all too well. My hand moved on its own accord, reaching for my handgun; forgotten and abandoned during my scuffle with Zim, it lay beside my former nemesis' corpse. It was cold and heavy in my hands as I raised it to my lips.

In a moment, the barrel rested on my tongue. With a click, the bullet rested in my brain. With a thud, my body rested on the ground. And somewhere, there was laughter.

FIN

---

A/n: So how many of you hate me, now?


	13. part eleven2

A/n: Alright. Ending part two. This is exactly the same as the previous chapter until the part where Dib picks up his gun, so feel free to scroll down until you reach that part if you wish.

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own it.

PART ELEVEN

I had the sense that the Brains, in all of their putrid, pulsating glory, were smiling at me with sick satisfaction as they praised my "worthiness" as I stood facing them, my chin held high with a kind of stubborn pride. I wiped my hands on my pants, aggravated at the fact that, though I knew there was nothing on them, I could still feel some sort of grime that just wouldn't come off, no matter how hard I tried. My mind was full of chaos, voices screaming, demanding that I give their deaths some kind of meaning; to attack and destroy the Brains and the Tallests now, when they weren't expecting it. However, my overstated curiosity won out and I did just what my enemy predicted by opening my mouth and asking a question.

"Worthy of what?"

The Brains seemed to chuckle, "Worthy, of course, of being the first of your people to witness the dawning of a new era—it is no coincidence that the great Irken race have come to this small planet. We have not only conquered a planet consisting mostly of our greatest weakness, but have enslaved it's extremely tall inhabitants. By achieving thus, the Irkens shall grow stronger; more powerful. And you, Human Dib—you are to thank for it all."

I was growing irritated at the speech, and uncomfortable under the glares of the Tallests, who remained silent as their leader gloated. "What the hell are you talking about?" I demanded.

"It is you, Human, who have called to us. It is you who brought this small, pitiful planet to our attention. You are responsible for the fall of your people, and the rise of ours."

Nothing was making sense. How could _I_ be the one who brought Earth to the Irkens' attention? _Zim_ was the one who was sent to conquer it, and when he was, they didn't even know for sure that there was a planet out here. I voiced these thoughts to the Brains who let out another wave of condescension.

"How sad it is," the Brains mused, "to find a species of creatures so tall, yet so ignorant to the universe around them." The Tallests began to sicker. I sent them a look that would have caused their heads to explode, had I telekinetic powers. "However," the Brains continued, causing the Tallests' mirth to cease, "we shall humor you this time, Human, and explain to you what the rest of your species will never discover: the universe as a whole is a collective unit. What happens on one end of the galaxy, after a time, will come to affect the other end. For example--the shock wave produced by a star exploding will destroy every planet in the vicinity until becoming weak enough that it will only cause a minor earthquake on a planet on the direct opposite end of the universe. It may not have much of an affect, but it will still exist.

"Much like every planet is connected, so are the minds of every creature in the universe. We are all linked together, our thoughts overlapping, silent voices traveling hundreds of miles, jumping from mind to mind, trying to find someone who will listen. Most creatures' brains are, on average, the same size, and therefore are not equipped to produce the energy needed to hear these distant thoughts—or to produce an energy wave strong enough for others to hear. However, there are some exceptions, Ourselves being one. We consist of only brain matter, and therefore are able to both receive and transmit these signals, enabling Us to control Our vast empire."

"That's very nice, but what does it all have to do with me?" I demanded. My hands were beginning to sting from the constant friction as I rubbed them against my pants, but still that feeling would not go away.

"You have an abnormally large head for a human, do you not?" The Brains asked. The familiar protest that my head was _not_ big rose in my throat, the result of years of conditioning, however, this time I kept mouth shut. Now was not the time be distracted by my own ranting.

The Brains took my silence an agreement and continued, "An abnormally large head to, perhaps, encase an abnormally large brain?"

I felt my eyes grow wide as what the Brains were insinuating finally began to sink in. If a larger brain meant a greater ability to receive and transmit signals across space, did that mean…

"You were able to hear my thoughts?" I breathed, sudden horror overwhelming me.

"Exactly. That is how we knew there was a planet out here, beyond our vast knowledge of space. We heard your thoughts and were amazed that there was a creature in this galaxy who felt such utter revulsion towards his own species. We knew that this was something great—a creature who would sacrifice everything to reach its own selfish, prideful goal."

What sort of trickery was this? Revulsion towards my own species? My own selfish goal? What were the Brains getting at? I felt a familiar anger grow inside of me.

"I don't understand what you're talking about," I shouted "I was trying to _save_ mankind, not damn it!"

"Did you not rise yourself above the level of the average human? Did you not see mankind as a lame horse, begging to be put out of its misery?" The Brains demanded, "You can lie with your words, Human, but your thoughts betray you. You play at being the martyr, when in reality, you are nothing but a conceited elitist, selfishly fighting for the recognition you feel you so righteously deserve."

"You're wrong," I growled, spitting the words between clenched teeth.

"Are we?"

With that question, the walls of the room wavered and shifted, as my senses were assaulted by a barrage of images and words. Scenes from my past played before me, my own thoughts and statements; inner monologues kept not so inner echoing in my ears: biting my tongue to keep back admissions of hate at my mother's grave, my lack of remorse at watching my father's execution, making love to Kala on the floor of the gym, heedless of the death that was going on outside in the world around us.

"_This is _my_ fight, not yours."_

I clutched my head in my hands, my eyes shut tight, my hands over my ears, trying to keep the information out. Still it played within my mind, the backs of my eyelids serving as projection screens, my eardrums performing the duties of speakers.

"_You see?! Actual proof that all the things I've been saying are actually right! Finally, a way to prove that I'm that I'm…"_

"_I think I've exposed enough to you, Kala, haven't I?"_

My own voice, my own words, my own damnation.

"_On one hand, I'll be saving myself, on the other, I'd be saving…_them_."_

"_Do you want me to coddle you and hold your hand? Cos it's not going to help, Gaz, it just won't. You're 18 years old, damn it; it's time for you to realize that not everything is going to go your way! Our mother killed herself, our father doesn't love us, and Zim is the bad guy. Just fuckin' accept it, already!" _

There was nothing I could do to stop the images from coming. I felt my knees grow weak as I lowered myself to the floor, still clutching my head, shaking it from side to side like a dog, trying to make it stop. A low moan escaped my lips.

"_You guys are just begging in to meet the moose!" _

"_Sometimes I just think that it's not worth it, Gaz, ya know? Sometimes I just…don't want to care."_

I could hear the Tallests' mocking laughter as I suffered. As much as I tried to fight it, the realization that the Brains were right was pushing at my brain—I had caused this. I was the reason that my civilization had fallen. I was the reason that everyone I cared about was dead. That was why my hands felt dirty—they were saturated in blood, not only from those I had killed myself, but with that from the entire human race. I was the monster, not Zim, not the Brains, not the hairy kid next door; me.

"_SEE? I TOLD you they were coming! I TOLD you this was going to happen, but did you believe me?! You DESERVE your fates, you ignorant FOOLS!"_

"_Because I know that I'm going to win, Kala. Everyone just probably will die before I do. As for hope, it's they're own faults for believing in something so asinine to begin with, not mine for allowing them an excuse to believe."_

I couldn't take it any longer, "ENOUGH!" I shouted, the force of the word seeming to rip the lining from my throat. Instantly the images stopped, the room fading back into its metallic normalcy. I lay in a pitiful heap at the Tallests' feet, curled into myself like a fetus, tears and snot running down my face in rivers. My glasses were fogged over, and I had handfuls of my own hair clenched in my fists, but I didn't care. I was a fraud. Everything I had worked for had only caused what I was trying to prevent. What did it matter anymore? What did it even matter to begin with?

"Do you understand, now, Dib?" The brains asked, their voice calming, soothing. "Do you understand what you did?" The voice seemed to change then, other voices joining it, different tones, pitches, and inflections merged together, forming a bitter and eerie harmony. I could pick out the familiar sounds of Zim, Gaz, Kala, my mother. "DO you understand what you are? Do you understand what you have to do?"

I did. I understood all too well. My hand moved on its own accord, reaching for my handgun; forgotten and abandoned during my scuffle with Zim, it lay beside my former nemesis' corpse. It was cold and heavy in my hands as I raised it to my lips.

"_You really are an idiot, aren't you?" _

_My eyes sprung open at the sound of another voice as the room suddenly fell silent. The gun was not longer in my hands, the room no longer the same bloodstained, metallic chamber. I sat now on the floor of my father's kitchen, my surroundings seeming too bright and yet cloudy at the same time. Leaning on the doorway of the room stood my sister, whole and healthy, wearing my trench coat and her own trademark scowl. _

"_I mean, what would blowing your brains out really accomplish?" She pushed herself off the wall and strode towards me, kneeling down to look me in the eye._

"_Gaz?" Her name tumbled from my lips, breathlessly as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing. She smiled slightly, one side of her mouth curving up, her eyebrows still furrowed in a scowl._

"_Hey, asshole," she greeted, her voice softer, "you look like shit."_

_Somehow I knew this was not a trick. Somehow her insult made me know that this was real. I was filled with utter, absolute joy as I felt my lips crack as they formed a smile for the first time in what felt like ages._

"_GAZ!" I shouted, and, in a moment of complete abandon tackled her, the force of my hug knocking her over._

"_Ugh, Dib, let go!" She grunted, struggling under my weight, "I may be dead, but I can still doom you."_

_That brought my back to my senses. Not the threat of doom, but her admission of death. I pushed myself off of her, rocking backwards until I was sitting back on the floor. She sat up as well, pushing her long violet hair back out of her eyes. _

"_So you _are_ dead." I muttered. It was not a question. _

_Gaz sighed. "You know that I am. This isn't a movie, Dib. This isn't you waking up to find that it was all just a dream. What has happened, happened. There's nothing that will change that."_

"_Then what is this?" I asked, I gestured around the room, "Why I am here instead of at Dad's lab? How is it that I'm speaking to you?" I focused my gaze back onto my sister, hoping that my eyes communicated 'information or else', and not 'help me, I'm lost'. "What is going on here?"_

"_This is your last moment of choice, Dib." She answered, "This is simply your mind's final, desperate attempt at self preservation. I'm just the messenger, telling you that you are about to make a very stupid mistake."_

"_So this isn't real?" My heart sank into my stomach._

_She shook her head, "No, this is all just in your mind. I'm a projection of your memories, trying to remind you what is really important."_

_I scoffed, "Always the modest one."_

"_No you idiot, not me. What I _represent_ to you. Humanity. After Mom died, I was the only tie you had left to the rest of the world. I was humanly present, and you were going to protect and keep that tie for as long as you possibly could, right? That's why you felt such a need to save the world from Zim and the Irkens—because you just don't want to be left alone, again."_

"_But I _failed_ humanity, Gaz!" I protested, emotion welling up inside of me, "I caused its downfall! I couldn't protect it, just like—"_

"_Just like you couldn't protect me, right?" she spit, cutting me off. Sighing, she shook her head, "You need to stop blaming yourself for that. There was nothing you could do to stop me from going into that house and you know it. You could have tied me up and dragged me home kicking and screaming and I would have waited till you fell asleep and snuck out anyhow. You didn't kill me, Dib. Hell, _Zim_ didn't even kill me. I killed myself. I knew that it was suicide going into Zim's base, but I didn't care. I was too stubborn for my own good and that's what killed me. Not you. Not Zim. Me."_

_I gaped at her. Her words were making sense, and yet something in my mind just didn't want to accept it. "But…but the Brains…" I stammered._

"_Oh to hell with the Brains!" She swore, pounding a small fist on the floor, "So your big head attracted them here. So what? How do you even know that they are telling the truth? How do you even know that they're not just trying to guilt you into destroying yourself so that they have the last laugh? If they can truly read your mind, then they know what a guilt complex you have. They know what buttons to push. You are a danger, Dib. You are the only one who saw Zim for what he was when we were children and the only one who stood up against the Irkens, now. They want to get rid of you, and what better way to do it than by your own hand?"_

_Pieces started clicking together, the rusty gears in my mind creaking into motion. How _did_ I know that the Brains where telling the truth? And even if I did bring them here, didn't that mean that I now had an even greater responsibility, an even greater reason for being the one to make them leave? I jumped to my feet, filled with new purpose. Gaz rose as well, a smile on her face. _

"_I see you finally get it." She stated._

_I grabbed her face in my hands and kissed her on the forehead. She scrunched up her face and turned her head away, but her smile still remained._

"_Thanks, Gaz. I owe you one." I became aware of the round lump that was the charm of her necklace in my pocket. I pulled it out and placed it around her neck. "You can have this back, now." I stated._

_She fingered the pendent, "Thanks." She replied. Looking back up at me she gave my shoulder a little push. "Now get going. You have a world to save."_

_I nodded and closed my eyes._

Again my world was thrown into chaos. The Tallests laughter rang in my ears, the voice of the Brains still taking on the illusion of the voices of those dead by my actions. The barrel of my gun was still in my mouth, its taste metallic on my tongue.

"Do you understand what you need to do?" The Brains repeated.

I took the gun out of my mouth. "Yes," I replied, smirking, "I do."

In that instant a shot rang out, the bullet from my gun careening towards its target, exploding its water-filled center on impact, shorting out circuitry and dissolving flesh as it imbedded itself deep into the center of the Brains' giant pak.

"Nooooo!" The Brains wailed. Sparks were shooting from everywhere as the Tallets ceased their laughter and lunged at me. My reflexes seemed heightened, as two more shots from my gun and their two nearly identical bodies fell with nearly identical sounds to the floor.

"You can't do this," the Brains stated, their voice becoming a low, pained rasp, "you can't destroy Us. We are all powerful. This is not the end. We shall not be defeated."

I shook my head, cocking my gun one last time, "Yeah, whatever." I replied, and fired.

The Brains' protests were cut off by the explosion caused by my last bullet destroying their pak. The overhead sprinkler system turned on automatically, putting out the resulting fire and burning the flesh of the fallen Irkens at the same time. I lowered the gun to my side and took a deep breath.

"It's over." I breathed. I lifted my face to the spray of the sprinklers, feeling the water wash away the blood and tears, "It's finally over."

I dropped the gun to the floor and turned towards the door, placing my hands in my pockets as I moved to leave. I noticed, then, something was different. Pulling the fabric of my pockets inside out I verified that they were, indeed, empty. Gaz's necklace was gone.

"Huh." I chuckled. "Would you look at that."

I shrugged and made my way out the door and back out into the world. It was time to face my responsibility. It was time to rebuild.

FIN

---

A/n:. All done. Hooray. Thank you all again for reading and for your wonderful reviews. If anyone has any questions or anything, feel free to ask and I'll stick up a little authors note chapter thingy answering them. I'm curious as to which ending everyone liked more. I personally like the first, though the second is prolly more satisfying. At any rate, R and R and thank you again for reading.

-j


	14. epilogue and note

"_So you finally did it."_

_I opened my eyes to see him standing over me, smirking at me in that way that used to drive me absolutely insane with aggravation. I sat up, rubbing my head. A glance at my surroundings showed that I was on the cliff that overlooked the city. The place where I buried Gaz and had my next to final confrontation with the figure that now had sat down beside me, making himself comfortable. _

_I stared at him, incredulously. He, like everything else in the area, was bathed in a faint white glow, softening his features like we were in an old 30's movie. _

"_I finally did what?" I asked him, wondering why he was so comfortable sitting beside his killer. I noticed he was without his disguise. I guess he didn't need it anymore._

_He made a gesture that I could only guess signified that he was rolling his eyes, as he had no pupils in his ocular implants, "Finally saved the world, stupid. You know, what you had been trying to do for the past however many years. You've accomplished your life's goal. What are you going to do, now?"_

_I resisted to urge to make a comment about Disney World and looked at the ground, plucking a blade of grass and playing with it idly. "I don't know," I answered after a few moments, "There's so much to do, so much to rebuild. There are also a lot of Irkens' left on the planet, you know, though with the Tallests and the Brains gone, they're pretty much just wandering around directionless."_

_Zim shrugged, "You could always let them help rebuild—adopt them as members of your planet."_

_I was appalled. "What? What the hell makes you think that that would work? There's no way—"_

"—_that you could become friends with your enemy?" He interrupted, a smug look on his face. _

_I huffed and tossed the blade of grass at him. "Yeah, something like that." I replied. Something occurred to me, "Hey, what are you doing here, anyhow? You're…well, you know. Dead."_

_He shrugged again, "You tell me, Dib-Monkey, this is your subconscious."_

"_So I'm dreaming?" _

"_Something like that." A different voice answered. I looked up, and jumped instantly to my feet. _

"_Kala?" I couldn't believe it. I stood there like an idiot, staring at her as she closed the last few feet between us. Vaguely I noticed Zim standing as well. I reached my hand out and gently touched Kala's cheek. She smiled and flicked me gently on the nose. _

"_I'm real, Dib. You can close your mouth now. A fly will buzz in and make it's home."_

_I obeyed, but still my eyes wouldn't dare blink, "Oh, Kala, I'm so—"_

_She held her hand to my mouth, silencing me, "Shh. Don't apologize. I understand."_

_I grabbed her wrist, removing her fingers from my lips, "No, you don't. Those things I said to you—our last few conversations. I didn't mean to be so horrible. It's not because I didn't—"_

_She shook her head again, "Dib, I know." She replied, once again interrupting me, "Didn't that talk with your sister teach you anything? Stop blaming yourself. The people who love you know why you do the things you do. We _understand_. There is no need for apologies. You just need to learn to _let go_."_

_My sister. Gaz. My heart skipped a beat. "Is…is she here? Is she here, too?"_

_Zim laughed, "Like I said, Dib-Beast: it's your subconscious." _

_I glanced over at him and then looked back at Kala, who was nodding. "You can see anyone you want, Dib, you just have to believe that you can."_

_Belief. The one thing that I had never had a shortage of, which was now the one thing that I lacked. Belief. Hope. Words that really had no meaning for me now. Things that I had once treasured which now seemed so distant. _

_Kala must have read the thoughts behind my drawn expression because she sighed and moved behind me, covering my eyes with her cupped hands, careful not to touch and smear the lenses of my glasses. _

"_Focus." Her breath tickled my ear. I felt myself shiver involuntarily. "Close your eyes and focus on your memories. Think about who you want to see, who you want to speak to. Imagine them here, with you. Remember what they looked like, how they smiled. If you can see them with your eyes closed, then you will finally remember how to believe."_

_I sighed, resigned, but allowed myself to be swayed by her voice. I remembered Gaz's hair, her affinity for video games. I remembered Gir's manic ramblings, Gretchen's braces when we were children, Elizabeth's habit of repeatedly pushing her glasses back on her nose, even when she had taken them off. I remembered the way my father always smelled of aftershave and ammonia, how my mother used to hum while doing the dishes. I remembered how Alex always gave the strongest hugs, and Torque used to see how many small places he could shove me into when we were children._

_I focused, and remembered, smelling, tasting, feeling things I hadn't in years. Putting myself back into situations where I felt safe, that I dreaded, where I felt most alive. I slowly became aware of noise rising around me. Voices, laughter. I bit my lip a bit unconsciously, butterflies appearing in my stomach. Had it worked? Did I believe? Was that all it took?_

_Kala removed her hands from my eyes and I was forced to take in a sudden breath. There they were. All of them. Alive and well, mingling as if they were at a bar-b-q at the Forth of July, and shouldn't, in all actuality, be rotting in a grave somewhere. _

_Elizabeth and Gir sat under the oak tree, feeding squirrels with nuts that Gir kept randomly shooting out of his head. Gretchen, Torque and Alex were huddled in a group with several of my troops, talking quietly. I noticed a football clutched in Torque's hands. People were everywhere, throwing Frisbees, talking, clapping each other on the back, shaking hands. They were all here. They were all alright. I breathed out a giant sigh, feeling a smile grow on my face._

_Kala had her arm around my shoulder. "See?" She asked, "That wasn't that hard, now was it?"_

"_No," I breathed, "No, it really wasn't." Still, something was missing. I turned towards her and Zim, both of whom were looking at me with bemused expressions on their faces. "But—" Whatever I was going to protest was cut short as I noticed the figures approaching from behind my friends. A man and a woman, he with a tall spike of black hair, her with locks of shimmering violet, their arms around each other as they walked like a couple of newly weds. They stopped a few feet away from us, smiles in their eyes to match the ones on their lips. _

"_Hello, Son." The man greeted. _

"_Dad?" I breathed, afraid that if I spoke too loudly, I would break the spell. I turned my gaze to the woman, who had tears on her cheeks, even as she smiled, "Mom?"_

"_My baby," the woman sighed, laughing breathlessly, "my son." _

_I took a tentative step as they both opened their arms, welcoming me. A few more feet and I was in their arms, my mother crying softly into my shoulder, my father's arm strong around my back._

_My mother pulled back from me and took my face into her hands, "You're all grown up." She whispered, running her fingers over the contours of my face, "You're a man, now. I'm so sorry, my dear, I'm so sorry I left you alone." She was openly crying, now. I shook my head, shushing her._

"_It's alright, Mom. You did what you felt you had to." I chuckled inwardly, realizing I was repeating words that were spoken to me only moments before. I guess I was the one who was ultimately more like our mother. Perhaps I was the one who had needed the protection all these years, and not my sister. Speaking of…_

_I pulled away from my parents' embrace and scanned the crowd. Where was she? I know that I had focused on her as well as everyone else, so where…_

"_Hey, loser." I heard her voice from behind me and turned to face her. She stood there, in all of her spooky glory, wearing my trench coat over her plaid skirt, her necklace now back in its rightful place around her pale neck. I put one arm around our mother, and held my other out towards Gaz. She looked uncomfortable for a minute, chewing on her bottom lip, as she glanced from me to our mother to our father, and then chuckled and stepped forward into our embrace._

"_Awww." I heard Gir's voice call out, "They gonna make babies!" _

_There was a large chorus of "ewww"s and other such comments and Gaz and I looked at each other and laughed as we heard Zim yell at the bot, trying to explain the difference between "family unit love" and that which causes "horrible reproductive acts". _

_My family and I pulled away from each other and made ourselves comfortable on the grass, joined by Kala and eventually, after he was able to calm the SIR unit down, Zim and Gir. After a few moments of pleasant conversation I turned towards my sister. _

"_So," I began, "are you proud of your big brother? You know, that whole 'saving the world' thing I just did?"_

_She rolled her eyes, and scoffed, "Yeah, yeah, don't remind me."_

_I laughed and then looked at her seriously, gazing into her eyes that were so much like my own, "Thank you, Gaz. You…you really were there for me. Thank you."_

_She blushed and then held up one small fist, "Don't get used to it, alright? I can still kick your ass."_

_Chuckling, I reached out and, with a little shove, pushed her over. She sat back up, glaring at me indignantly, and moved forward as if to strike me, pulling it at the last moment to give me nothing but a playful tap on the chin. She smiled at me with her little half smile. "Jerk." _

"_Yeah, yeah, whatever." I answered. All conversation ceased then as fireworks appeared overhead. The sun had set, and it seemed the Independence Day celebrations had begun._

_--_

A/n: The above is a sort of epilogue. I wasn't originally intending to write anything like that, but since FFN won't let a chapter be purely Author's Note material, I figured I would write out something little. I figured, also, after all of that angst, it would be good to leave it off with a warm feeling in everyone's tummy. Hopefully it didn't distract from the content of the story that preceded it.

I want to, again, thank everyone who reviewed this fic, and everyone who read it but kept silent. While this isn't my first attempt at Fanfiction (I wrote a few JTHM fics under the name Jenna5, that, while aren't horrible, aren't really that great. One is the obligatory Nny/Devi fic which, now that I'm three years older have realized is completely against the entire point of the Nny/Devi story line. The other is what could have ended up a Mary Sue if I had finished it, which I began before I even knew really what a Mary Sue was. You guys can look them up and read them if your interested, and I appreciate, still, feedback, but really…they're not that special. But I digress…) While this isn't my first attempt at Fanfiction, this is my first IZ story and the first that I actually REALLY wanted to do well on and REALLY wanted to get out. I wanted this story to be told. I wanted these views to be put forth, whether they are truly understood by the reader or not. So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who put forth an interest in this story. It really means a whole lot.

Dibsthe1 expressed an interest in knowing what the dream was that inspired this. Before I try to explain anything or get to anyone's questions, I figure I'll stick it on here. So here it is, copied directly from my Livejournal (yes, like most everyone else in the world, I have an LJ because I'm deluded enough to think that people care about my day. The name is Forgottenrain incase anyone wants to play into my delusions.) (Ugh, reading this now reminds me of how, a year ago, I really didn't care how I typed on that thing. Please ignore the lack of punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc…Hey, at least it isn't AOL speak. shudder)

_(Feb 28th, 2004)_

_had one of my weird re-occurring dreams last nite._

this one is about the earth being taken over by aliens. and not just ANY aliens, but the ones from mars attacks (which, man, i wanna watch that movie, now...). the only peeple that werent enslaved or killed are me, and my random british dream guy. (who, i just realized because my dreams are that realistic, even has a boy smell. that so weird. i need to pay more attn. thats just cool.) anyhow.

so the head alien thing is a giant brain. yes, like on ninja turtles. and he has a 2nd in command/body guard who is human.

so my alex (random guy) and i invade the ship and start kickin alien ass. we find a dog that the aliens were gonna do horrible tests on, so we let him come with us. further down the line, the doggy gets shot, and i have to kill him to put him out of his misery.

so we make it thru the ship to the command center, and fight with the body guard guy. we kick his ass, but in his last shot, he kills alex. i get uber pissed off, and take his coat (he was wearing a long leather trench) and go to kick some brain ass.

i make it to where the brain is. for some reason the body guard guy is still alive (tho shot up to hell), and the brain is just kinda hangin out on this elevator thing. the brain asks me to listen to what it has to say, and i do, in pure video game/action movie style. so i get on the elevator with the brain (its more like a floor panel that moves up and down...there arnt any walls or roof...) and look up to see the body guard put a gun in his mouth and blow out his own brains.

the brain and i get to the bottom floor and he informs me that i called it there. that it was really my brain, and i wanted the world to die. i told him that wasnt true, and he asked my why i never showed any remorse when i had to kill the dog. i told him that i was doing it a favor and it would have suffered if i hadnt. he told me that was how i viewed the entire world, in my heart. that everyone was suffering, and it would be best to put them out of their misery. that i was the one controlling everything.

there was then a series of flashbacks and i realize that hes right and start bawling.

this time i woke up then. other times ive had this dream, i either kill myself or kill the brain...i think that this is the first time ive woken up before making that decision one way or the other.

So yeah. There it is, in a nutshell. I changed quite a bit to make it make more sense and to fit the IZ universe, but the basic meaning is still there.

Now for the fun part:

Senri had brought up in a review of ch 8 a hint of GAZR. When I wrote it, that really was in the back of my mind, and I leave it really up to reader's interpretation. Personally, I don't see the attraction in Zim, so I don't see the attraction that Gaz would have for him. In my mind, in this they just cared for each other deeply, as friends and nothing more. However, it would explain why Gaz was so determined that Zim would never harm her.

Which brings me to Maran Zelde's comment about how he must not have cared about her to kill her so disturbingly. Unfortunately, by writing this from only Dib's point of view, I limited myself as to the knowledge that the reader would have of the occurrences within the story. This works to my advantage in that I had no reason to detail what exactly happened, which works cos I would rather not write anything too gory, but leaves me with the disadvantage in that I can't tell what Zim is feeling during all that. I mention that he never really _wanted_ to kill Gaz and had no choice in the matter, but don't explain why he had to do it in such a…disgusting, yet thorough manner. The way I picture it, the Tallests asked him to torture her for their amusement, knowing that, while it would bother Zim to kill his friend, it would destroy him to watch her suffer. They wanted him to crack. They wanted an excuse to kill him, then, as a traitor, when he couldn't go though with it. Zim understood this and felt so much anger at the fact that after a while he stopped thinking that this was Gaz he was hurting, but focused instead on his rage towards his leaders, imagining _them_ as the ones he was inflicting the pain on. He did this to distance himself from the situation. Her blood painted the walls, not because he didn't care for her, but because that was the only way that he would have been able to go through with it.

If that makes any sense to anyone other than me.

Senri also brought up that Zim's brain is kept in is pak, and therefore, is he really dead? Honestly, I kinda forgot that fact as I was writing this, and I figure that, if he wasn't dead _before_ the sprinkler system turned on, he sure as hell was _afterwards_, seeing as how the water would have burned his body beyond repair and more than likely shorted out the circuitry of his pak.

And now for the many questions of Dibsthe1, who I must say, has been absolutely awesome throughout the writing of this fic, being someone, through email correspondence, that I could bounce ideas off of which, in the long run, allowed me to fully develop my own views on the characters and their actions. So yay to her.

Dib is acting out of just being human, you're right. He is, in fact, the most human character in the story, and on the show. Which is, I guess, what ultimately makes him flawed by nature.

In my opinion, no, there is no such thing as true kindness or self sacrifice. Everything we, as humans, do is, in some way, for our own personal gain. Whether it be public recognition, a spot in heaven if you believe in that, or just because it makes yourself feel good, anything you do is for you and you alone. Which sounds horrible, but makes sense in the long run.

A good friend of mine once told me that love is the most selfish emotion there is. You don't love someone because of the way _you_ make _them _feel, but rather because of the way _they_ make _you_ feel. You don't fall in love with someone thinking "man, I really make him happy." You fall in love because "I feel so wonderful when he's around. He makes me laugh. He makes me feel special/beautiful/wanted." It's always me, me, me. Yes, we often put ourselves on the line and yes, we make sacrifices for that person, and yes, we often become hurt, but we only do that because we don't want to let go of something that made Us feel Good.

Dib holds on to and protects his sister because she's the only real person in his life, up until Zim shows up. His mother is gone physically, his father is gone emotionally, at least Gaz is There, in the room with him. He puts up with her bullshit—the abuse and the irritation—because as long as she's there, he isn't alone in the world. It isn't some kind of self sacrificing masochistic behavior because he really thinks that she needs his protection—it's just simply that he doesn't want to be left alone. He wants to feel that someone gives a damn about him.

Which is how I feel that he looks at the rest of the world. He Wants that recognition. He Wants that vindication, to show the world that he's Not crazy, and that everything he's been saying Is correct. He wants to be important. He wants to be needed and loved. He's human, and in that, he is selfish and flawed, just like everyone else in the world.

Humanity really wasn't saved, nor would it have been, either way. We're destined to destroy ourselves—to run each other into the ground. It's only a matter of centuries or millennia, but eventually, it will occur. Someone will become too greedy, we will become too accustomed to playing god, and eventually a bomb will go off or a genetically created virus will get loose and that's all she wrote. Whether or not the Irkens would have won in this fic, humanity is still doomed. I think, though, we would just feel a little better about it.

Dib isn't really a bad guy, he's just, as I stated, human and flawed. But yes, in this fic, Dib does discover that the true villain has been himself all along. The things that the Brains were saying were accurate, whether they were using it to their own advantage or not, that doesn't make them any less true.

Gaz's sudden character change is because now, because she's dead, she understands the world on a higher level. She is able to accept everything bad that has happened in her life and is now able to show what she really feels. She cares about her brother. She adopted his trench coat in this fic as a symbol of that. It was a part of him that she could always have around, just as Dib holds onto Gaz's necklace after she's killed. (Though in a first draft, the necklace did have a higher meaning, being that it had been modified into a tracking and spying device by the Irkens, which meant that the message in Gir's hard drive had really only been a red herring, but that was a little too complicated to work out. The same draft also had Gaz still been alive and working for Zim and the Irkens—her death was only a decoy to drive Dib further towards his goal and alienate him more from humanity, but I couldn't think of a real motive for her to be going about it, so I scrapped that idea. Anyhow…) Gaz still insults her brother after death and threatens him because that really is just her personality. However, her taunts are much more playful after her death because she realizes now that she no longer has to put up the front…a front that was never necessary for her to put up in the first place, but she was too blind to realize that during her life.

As to whether or not Dib's little vision while on the brink of suicide was real or not…that's up to the reader's interpretation as well. Yes, he could have given her necklace back to her spirit within the vision, but it also could have simply been lost in the fight. It showing up around her neck in the epilogue is really only because that takes place in his subconscious, and that is his vision of her—with the necklace. So you can interpret that however you will.

I'm glad that everyone enjoyed the second ending, even though I still like the first better. (I like being left with the feeling of "wait…what the hell just happened?" But then, I'm weird.) You're all lucky, then, cos I really wasn't even going to put the second ending up, but that scene with him and Gaz was just begging to be written, so I gave in.

Ummm…I think that's it. Looking back on all this, I realize that my views prolly seem very negative and cynical, but really, I just try to look at things from a realistic standpoint. Some people may see that as a bad thing. (shruggy) I can't help it either way.

But I'm gonna stop rambling, now. Thank you so much again to Kitsu Millions, kokono, Maran Zelde, ces Kirby, Psychosis, Dibsthe1, Goopy Goo, the mysterious " " (since that little mark won't show up on here for some reason ), spectacal, Senri, Only a Handful of Time, and The Fic Lord for all your wonderful encouragement and praise. You all rock the casba. Or something.

I'm part way though the second chapter of Goldfish Don't Bounce (which is proving to be much harder than originally anticipated, since I'm putting myself in Gir's head for that chapter) and am working on making sure that I have all of the plot points worked out for You Only Live Twice, because that one is pretty damned complicated, plot wise. The next part of that should be up within the next few days, though. I don't want to keep anyone hanging for too long, lest they forget me. :)

So, again and again, thank you, and hopefully you all will keep reading the random brain vomit that is my writing. (Nice mental image, no?)

Sincerely,

-j


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